


The Lawyers From Hell

by jaebirdbluetheawesome (GreyAreaSystem)



Series: Jae Does Maribat [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Maribat - Fandom, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:46:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26277373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyAreaSystem/pseuds/jaebirdbluetheawesome
Summary: Their friends call them Chloé B and Nettie.Their parents call them Kitty and Bug.Their enemies call them Dupain and Cheng.And after publicly slamming Gabriel Agreste into solitary confinement, Bruce Wayne hires Dupain and Cheng to go after Lex Luthor next.Marinette moves to Gotham to take over slamming Luthor with so many lawsuits he drowns in paper.She takes the office next to Tim Drake.So what do YOU think happens when the world's two greatest detectives sit ten feet apart?
Relationships: Chloé Bourgeois/Kagami Tsurugi, Tim Drake/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Jae Does Maribat [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877605
Comments: 203
Kudos: 730





	1. Obligatory Introductory Chapter

**Author's Note:**

> Here by popular demand, it's something no one wanted!!!!

Tim was expecting an intern to drop off papers that morning, and he was going to ask them to get him coffee before they left, so when he heard the door open at the time he was expecting it to, he said,

“Kid, can you get me a large black coffee on your way out.” To which the person who had just walked through the door answered, 

“Who the fuck do you think I am?” He froze, and looked around his desktop. He saw a tiny pissed off woman about his age wearing a t-shirt with a rock band on it under a leather jacket, black skinny jeans, and platform boots. Her blue hair with black roots was held up in two french braids with red ribbon intertwined in them. She was holding a large mocha frappuccino, and glaring daggers at him. 

“You aren’t the intern.”

“No the fuck I am not.”

“Well then who the hell are you?” He knew in a second this woman could make his life hell for fun if she had her way. He almost wanted her to. 

“Marinette Felicity Cheng. Congratulations, Drake,” She held a hand out to him, “I’m being paid to make you miserable.”

  
  


**Twenty-Five years ago** :

Marinette Felicity Cheng was born on March fifth, 1995, to a single mother in Hong Kong. She never knew her father, he died when she was (roughly) the size of a peach. But Sabine was never deterred from her goals, to own a bake shop in Paris. Fate could throw whatever it wanted at this powerful woman, she would stop for no one. 

There is no record of the birth of Chloé Bridgette Dupain, since she was born in a bathtub during one of the worst blackouts in Parisian history. There was no birth certificate until after she was angrily left on a doorstep by her mother, after she was found by her father, and _ after _ he drew to conclude that someone had left a baby on the very wrong doorstep. But years went by, and no one came to collect her, so he proudly called her his own.

  
  
  
  


**Year: 2000**

**Age: 5**

“Hi! I’m Chloé!” A bright blond girl sat down next to her on the large rug in the classroom. 

“Oh.” Marinette responded. 

“What’s your name?”

“Marinette.”

“What are you eating for lunch Marinette?”

“My momma made me a turkey sandwich. What did your momma make you?”

“I don’t have a momma, but Daddy made me some cookies to share with the class for our very first day. Do you want one?” Chloé pushed a box of cookies towards her.

“Oh. I’m sorry I asked about your mommy.” Marinette took a cookie.

“That’s ok. A lot of people don’t know.”

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t have a daddy.”

“Why would that make me feel better?”

“I don’t know. I guess because that makes us even.” Chloé seemed to think about this for a second. 

“You know what Marinette? You can have a second cookie. Because I like you.” marinette grinned as she took a second cookie. 

“Alright class, let’s all take a seat where Chloé and Marinette are already sitting so we can all share facts about ourselves.” The teacher clapped, and all the other kids ran to sit in a circle near them. “Let’s all share our names, a fact about us, and what we want to be when we grow up.” The kids on the other side of Marinette started, and it got to her before it got to Chloé. 

“Hi, I’m Marinette, I like to eat cupcakes, and I want to be a lawyer when I grow up.” Marinette mumbled. 

“What did you say?” The teacher prompted. Marinette hesitated, and Chloé took over for her. 

“Her name is Marinette, she likes cupcakes, and she wants to be a lawyer. My name is Chloé, I love cookies, and I want to be a lawyer just like Marinette so we can be a super-awesome duo team. Just like you see on TV!” 

“Really?”

“Yeah!” The teacher smiled warmly down at her, thinking about all of the other kids she had seen come through here with high hopes that just turn out to be messes. She gave it a week before they forgot they even knew each other. 

But a week went by, and Chloé invited her over to the bakery where she lived for a play date. 

“Honey, are you sure your friend lives in a shopping district?”

“She said there was a huge sign and that you can’t miss it!” Marinette skipped down the sidewalk, her black hair pulled up into two tiny pigtails on her head, held together with bright red hair elastics. “See?” She pointed up to a big sign, and Sabine inhaled sharply at the sight of the bakery. It was almost exactly like something she had pictured in her head all those years ago. No, it  _ was  _ what she had pictured in her head. Down to every last bit. 

* * *

And then a month went by.

“Marinette honey, I have some good news!” Sabine picked up ehr widley smiling little girl.

“What happened? Is Santa coming early?”

“No, sweety.” Sabine giggled, “I got a new job, and you’ll never guess where.”

“For the Easter Bunny?”

“Better.”

“ _ Santa _ ?” She whispered, eyes wide.

“Nope, even better.” Sabine teased her. Marinette gasped.

“Mama, are you gonna go work for  _ god _ ? Are you going to be an  _ angel _ ?” Sabine started to laugh so hard she almost dropped her child.

“No, silly. I got a job working for your friend Chloé’s dad. You and Chloé are going to get off the bus at the bakery  _ every day  _ after school now.”

“Oh no way! That’s so cool!” Sabine set her down, and she skipped off to go play with her toys.

* * *

And then a year went by. Sabine’s apartment contract expired, but she wasn’t able to renew it because of a new bigger family applying for a space, and they were able to pay more money than her, so they gave her an eviction notice.

“Tom, I don’t know how much longer Marinette and I will be around. We… we may be forced to move.” She confessed.

“Well that's nonsense. You and I have been dating for a while now, and I think… I think having a sister may be good for Chloé.” Sabine gave a small gasp. 

“Are you…”

“Suggesting you move in? Absolutely!”

“I was going to say proposing, but that works too.”

“Oh, did I just propose? Here, let me try that again. Uh…” He looked around, and couldn’t find anything that resembled a ring. “I don’t have a ring, but I have that super-sparkly spatula Marinette gave me for Christmas, does this work?” He got down on one knee, and Sabine started to laugh. 

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate the story in a few years. Yes! I accept!”

**Year: 2007**

**Age: 12**

“Chloé, are you sure we should be doing this?” Marinette whined. 

“Too late, you already got your head in the sink.” Chloé was shaking up a bottle of at-home hair bleach she had picked up from a walgreens last weekend. 

“What will Mom and Dad say when they see you’ve dyed me bright blue?”

“Probably something along the lines of, ‘ _ wow Chloé, our wonderful child, you sure do have some talent with hair, you should become a stylist, _ ’ or something.” 

“What happened to our plan? Are you throwing that out the window so soon?”

“Nah. We can still be kick-ass lawyers and play pretend on the side.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“I can be a hairstylist, and you can be a fashion designer. But only on the weekends.”

“Crime doesn’t stop on the weekends, Chlo.” She sighed. 

“Ok true, but still. It can be my hobby.”

“Your retirement job.” Marinette giggled as Chloé pulled on some gloves, and started away on the bleach.

“Twelve year olds don’t worry about retiring, Marinette.”

“Ok, true.” She sighed, and stayed quiet for most of the rest of the process. Three hours later, she had bright blue hair.

“Holy shit, you look  _ good _ .” Chloé admired her work. 

“I’m scared to open my eyes.” Marinette squeezed them shut as she walked past a mirror. 

“Don’t be, you look fabulous.” Marinette slowly opened one eye, and then blinked in surprise. She… she looked fucking awesome. 

“Oh, this is badass.” She mumbled. 

“Did I just hear one of you two say a-” Sabine walked in, and they both jumped. “Oh wow you really do look badass.”

“I’m so sorry-” Chloé started as Marinette yelled, 

“It was all her idea!”

“Hey! No fair!” 

“It’s true!”

“I know, but the fact that would jump to blaming me is hurtful!”

“Sorry.” Marinette grumbled, and then went back to fluffing her hair in the mirror.

* * *

“Argh! Bug! Huge bug!” Marinette jumped, and almost fell off her top bunk.

“I’m not a bug!” The small thing insisted, and she screamed even louder. 

“Talking bug! Bug mouse!”

“I’m not a bug! Stop screaming before-”

“Hey, are you ok?” Chloé threw the door to their room, and jumped when she saw the red bug thing, almost causing her to fall off the ladder.

“Oh no.”

“Marinette, you got one too?”

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” Marinette freaked out. 

“She didn’t explain it yet? That’s a Kwami! I can’t believe we both got one!” After several hours of much quieter screaming, many explanations, they figured out they were partners in crime-fighting. 

They called their transformation, and Chloé looked somewhat like a Cat. She had the ears, the tail, was dressed all black… except for her boots and gloves. 

“What the hell? I thought I was supposed to be a black cat!” She frowned at her white gloves.

“Oh my god!” Marinette wheezed, “You look like a cat named Socks!” Chloé glared at her sister.

“Fuck. You.”

“Ok Socks.” She called her own transformation, and looked in the mirror. She had knee-high red boots with black edges and soles, black leggings, a black turtleneck, and a bright red crinkled miniskirt with a Yoyo hanging off of it like a tape measure. “Oh you have got to be kidding me.” They both had matching black masks. Chloé shocked as she laughed,

“You look like a black and red Wonder Woman!” She laughed. 

“Shut up, Socks.”

“Hey. It’s Chaton in the suit, Spots.”

“That’s Ladybug to you... motherfucker.” They heard a crash, and realized what they were missing outside of the window.

“Oh. Right.”

* * *

“I met a girl today.” Chloé confessed as they walked home from school that day.

“Ooooooh, who is it?” Marinette poked her in the ribs, grinning. 

“She was part of the fencing class today, she came in and challenged me and she was really good and then I was taken aback by how hot she was, and she got mad at me for letting my guard down, and… she’s so hot, I don’t know what to do.” 

“Talk to her, dumbass.” They saw an Akuma pop up in the distance, and they exchanged looks before they split up to avoid suspicion. 

“You ready, Socks?”

“I fucking hate you Spots.”

* * *

“I told Kagami about our plan to graduate early to go to Harvard at the time normal students would start college to be done early, and she suggested taking online summer classes to get extra credits.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Marinette jumped up to grab her laptop. 

“Have you decided what your pre-law school degree is going to be yet?” Chloé was getting a two-year degree in forensic criminology. 

“I’m thinking business.”

“Good. That will be useful to start ourselves up.”

* * *

The summer between Coll è ge and Lycée, they got to work. They spent nearly every hour of every day on their laptops, much to the confusion of their parents. 

“Don’t you girls want to go out and have fun with the rest of your friends?” Sabine asked nervously.

“Crime stops for no one, Momma.” Marinette said as she continued with her english homework. 

“Not even for cookies?” They paused.

“Ok,  _ maybe _ crime sometimes stops for cookies.” Chloé went to go get some lemonade to drink with her cookies. 

* * *

They graduated two years early, at seventeen. And two years and two bachelor's degrees later, they were at Harvard. Too bad they had to somewhat constantly use the Horse miraculous to get them to a fight in Paris. But four years, and _ four total PH. D’s _ later, they did it. 

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.” Ladybug growled down at Agreste. “My ex’s dad is the fucking villain?” She whispered, and Chaton used her super Chat hearing to pick up on it.

“Oh, it sucks to be you today.” She sighed, and they got to work. 

* * *

Marinette leaned far back in her chair, and stared at the ceiling. She glared at the ceiling as she thought. 

“Hey!” She yelled, and one of her team members opened the door somewhat confusedly. 

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Grab a stepladder, and twist this light slightly so it’s not in my face, please?” The new hire seemed confused, but did as he was told. Someone came in with a stepladder, and took the light out so it was off, but not gone completely.

“Thanks, guys.” She went back to her thinking. She had a list about a mile long of all the things she could charge Agreste with, and being Hawkmoth only took up about two-thirds of it. 

In two years, Dupain and Cheng managed to become the most feared law firm in all of France, and they were starting to expand business. 

“What’s up, bitch?” She opened her eyes from her deep thinking to see Sabrina slap a pile of papers on her desk.

“May I kindly ask what the fuck?”

“My work from when I visited India.”

“I didn’t know you visited India?”

“Officially, I didn’t.”

“Oh goodness.”

“This is everything I dug up on Agreste while I was over there.” Marinette perked up at that, and started to dig into it.

“Oh you are a fucking angel, and beautiful wonderful detective angel.”

“Thanks.” She turned around, and walked out. Probably to go harass a new secretary she found cute. She had become a cop pretty soon after highschool, and she found it fairly easy to make her way up to detective. She could move on from that, but… she didn’t want to. She liked being a detective. 

* * *

“I asked you a simple yes or no question, sir.” She needed to take a break from the Agreste case. She picked an assault case. She always had these down. “Did you or did you not just confess to committing the crime?” The man in the chair choked and sputtered. 

“Well, he should feel ashamed for-”

“DID YOU. OR DID YOU NOT. COMMIT THE ACT OF ASSAULT?” She yelled over him. 

“Yeah, but he was wearing-”

“I didn’t ask you what he was wearing! I asked you a yes or no question!”

“Yes.”

“Yes you committed the assault?”

“Yes. I committed the assault.” The man under scrutiny seethed. 

“And here we have a confession, ladies and gentlemen. He has confessed to assaulting this poor young man, with that drug, outside of the Sky Angel Club.” She aggravatedly sat down in her chair. She figured her mind was clear enough to go back to the Agreste case. It had been handed directly to her, of course. 

* * *

She had to get nearly every lawyer she had hired in the past year to re-go over the case again before the trial. 

“List everything we’ve got.” She stood at the head of a long table, filled on either side. “You.” She pointed to one of them, and he stood up.

“We double-checked, and made a list of every Akuma, which counts as mental manipulation and abuse, then every victim of every Akuma, everything he damaged as each Akuma, and then we have everything wrong with his healthcare plan, accounts of his importing illegally paid-for as well as illegally-made product, use of factories that go against french labor laws,” He went on, and Marinette continued to twitch in agitation as he listed all the different things. 

“And in grand total…” She waited. 

“About 753 Akuma cases, 3,407 damage bills, 53 illegal imports, $800,000 worth of benefits needed to be paid, and 456 labor law violations, and, of course, terrorism.”

“Well shit.” A woman next to her mumbled. 

“Possible comebacks to these claims?”

“Someone could mention the damage doesn’t need to be paid since Ladybug fixed it.” Another woman, Miss DeCroix, pointed out. Marinette nodded.

“Then our argument would be that Ladybug is a seperate party and cannot be held responsible to fix the damages for someone else and to rely on a third party for damages is reckless and irresponsible.” 

“But then if the car is in perfect functioning condition, why should any compensation be made?”

“Now you're thinking.” Marinette pointed to Miss DeCroix. “What else do you got for me?”

“Because the car was fixed by a different team doesn’t mean he still didn’t cause the damage in the first place, and compensation should still be paid since he himself was responsible for the damage but not the replacement.”

“Nice.”

“I think we should add something else to the charges.”

“Fire away, Clive.” She yelled to the back.

“The constant stress of Akuma’s made that parents with young children were often denied healthcare, or had jacked up healthcare since it was assumed that children, who have much less control over their emotions, were more likely to get akumatized and therefore need therapy from the situation, so healthcare that covered therapy was jacked up. Parents who were forced to pay out of pocket for their child's therapy should be paid, not the healthcare companies.”

“Oh shit.” Marinette realised this was a really good point. “How did none of you get that the first time around?” They all seemed to ponder this. “Clive, I want you getting a raise.” Clive pumped his fist in the air, and Marinette air-fived him. 

Because that’s what being the most feared lawyer in France is all about. 

  
  


* * *

“What on earth are you three watching?” Bruce frowned at his children who stared at the live television feed in slight amazement. 

“A courtroom.” Damian deadpanned, and Dick gestured for him to shut up.

“Well obviously, but what is-”

“Shush and find out.” Tim patted a seat next to him. “She’s amazing.”

“Which one?” Bruce looked back and forth between a tiny girl with bright blue hair, and a tall blond. 

“Both?” The tiny one started yelling something about terrorism. A chill went up his spine.

“Well alright then.” As the feed continued, he began to notice what they found so entertaining by some trial. The small girl was furious, yelling, gesturing wildly, and yet was somehow perfectly professional at the same time. She gave terrifying looks, making the man on trial shrink in fear, and he was impressed. 

“Who are they?” He asked. 

“The blond one is Dupain, the tiny one is Cheng. Their step-siblings, I think. They're definitely sisters, but also not related. They run the scariest law firm in France, they get big people like this guy and absolutely eat them alive.” Dick had learned these facts all of an hour ago, when he heard of them for the first time. 

“Imagine what they could do to Lex Luther.” Tim joked, but Bruce’s mind had already wandered farther than that.

* * *

Marinette didn’t sleep that night. They wormed nearly 400 million dollars out of the guy, stuck him with over a thousand life sentences, and did an insane amount of giving back to the community. So why did she feel like shit?

_ Because you’re twenty-four and celebrating this victory alone, _ A small voice in the back of her head spoke up.

“Shut up, voice.” She grumbled out loud to no one, and rolled over in her bed. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who's ready for some misunderstandings leading to bad 'first' impressions?

She walked into the office that the desk-lady had directed her to, and she decided to play a fun social experiment where she flung the door open without knocking and see how badly he panicked. Shockingly, he didn’t. 

“Kid, can you get me a large black coffee on your way out?” He grumbled.  _ Awe, fuck me, he’s hot. _ But she maintained her composure and glared at him. 

“Who the fuck do you think I am?” She saw him freeze, and looked up at her in a slight panic.

“You aren’t the intern.” He almost stuttered. Almost. If he had, she wouldn’t have been responsible for what would have happened next.

“No the fuck I am not.” _ God, he has pretty eyes, _ She thought to herself,  _ Nopity nopity nope, keep your cool, don’t lose your mind just yet, _

“Well then who the hell are you?” She grinned at him.

“Marinette Felicity Cheng. Congratulations, Drake,” She held a hand out to him, “I’m being paid to make you miserable.”

* * *

“Dad what the hell is she talking about?” Tim frowned as his father walked in. “What did you do?”

“Ah, Marinette! I didn’t expect to see you until Monday!” He smiled at her. 

“Well, I figured it would be good to come and make your acquaintance before just barging in on you.”

“You’re serious?” Tim was sure he should be more excited than this. He loved watching her tear people apart on television, but in real life, she was… confusing. She was so small and adorable, and smiled and gave off a sense of security. So why did he hate it so much?

“Yes, I have come up with a new contract to have a partnership with Dupain and Cheng, and Marinette had personally offered to come over and be here in person for a while.”

“But… you’re French.” He didn’t know why he was fighting this so much. Maybe she just scared him a little too much.

“I’ve passed the bar exam and can legally practice law in four different countries.” She frowned at him. “Do you really think I can’t be here?”

“I… no, this is fine.” He sighed, and went back to his desktop.

“Cool. I’m gonna be putting things together next door, if you don’t mind.” She waved, and left. 

* * *

Monday was… strange.

He could hear most of what she aggravatedly mumbling to herself through the walls, and understood only about half it. Two hours in, and he heard a loud  _ thump _ hit the wall.

“Do you have a phone I could borrow?” Marinette popped back up in his doorway. “I would use my cellphone, but…” She held up a smashed phone, “I have a clingy ex who is going  _ through it _ right now.”  _ So that’s what the loud thump was. _ Tim frowned at her, and then waved his hand at his desk phone, and she sat down across from him. “Oh thank you. I don’t have a landline yet.”

“Yeah.” Was all he said, not knowing what else to say.

He saw her walk by his open door with a large stack of files not long after. 

“What’s that?” He asked as she passed. 

“Hold on a second.” He heard her make a loud thumping noise, again, and then she popped back in, sans files. “So since you have legally binding contracts with multiple other companies, if you think they’re doing something illegal on their end of the deal, you do have a right to investigate on grounds of infringement.”

“Huh.” 

“And those files were every company you have under you that Mr. Wayne thinks may be… not up to code.”

“So that’s why  _ you’re _ here.”

“Yeah. I’m going through every single file, making sure that cancelling the contract is in breach of contract, investigating everything I legally am able to access for this specific investigation, then after that I’m going to use some… distasteful methods to get into every crack I can’t get to with these contracts, and I’m starting with Lex Corps first so he can’t catch wind of what’s happening and wiggle his way out of it. And even if he did, We’ve got the back door closed.”

“The back door closed?”

“We take down terrorists, we don’t work for them.” She leaned on the doorframe, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t get on their payroll.” She gave him an evil look, and he was glad she was on their side. 

“You plan on doing that all by yourself?”

“Oh, please.” She smirked. “You’ll meet the rest of the team soon enough.”

“Wait what?”

* * *

She finally got her company phone line figured out, and started with Max.

“Is our plan set in motion yet?” She asked. She didn’t even say hello. 

“Sending the transfer papers through now. Application process underway.” He responded. He had graduated MIT with the intention of working building tech for intelligence, but after a strange series of events they made him a field agent. It had been a strange week. 

“Lit.” She hung up without saying goodbye. They had given up on being awkward years ago.

“Hey Socks, how are things on your end?” She rang Chloé

“You have _ got  _ to stop calling me that. People will either think you’re crazy or will figure us out.” Chloé whispered. 

“Eh, I don’t really care at this point. That asshole is gone, and we’re good to go. Now, things in Metropolis?”

“Smooth so far.” 

“Lit.” She hung up, now unable to hear Chloé’s grumbling about ‘ _ Needs to learn not to fucking do that to me _ ’.

* * *

About ten minutes passed by when her phone rang for the first time. 

“Marinette what the hell.” Sabrina sighed. 

Took you long enough to get this number, detective.” She teased her. 

“Why have I been given orders to be part of a joint investigation that I’m pretty sure was made up about half an hour ago?”

“Because I need you here? And I don’t want to waste money on flying you over and back so damn often?”

“You have got to learn that other people have lives that don’t stop for you, Nettie.”

“Crime doesn’t stop either. You in?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No?” Marinette tried. Detective Raincomprix sighed. 

“Fine. I’m in.”

“Nice. I’ll tell you what’s up when you get here.” She hung up. Again. 

* * *

  
  


Alya almost dropped her coffee as she bumped into someone heading to her desk at the Daily Planet. She had transferred there recently, at the wishes of a certain famed lawyer friend of hers. 

“I am so sorry!” She cringed as she pushed her glasses back up onto her face, and wormed past them to her desk. 

‘ _ All set in for my first real day _ ’ she sent to the group chat. ‘ _ Nino’s a little weirded out by the move, but he’s doing ok. He’s found a nice club to work out of while we do this _ .’

‘ _ Congratulations, you’re four behind me _ ’ Marinette teased.

‘ _ Still packing. _ ’ Sabrina sent, with an angry emoji .

‘ _ Been here a month _ .’ Chloé added. ‘ _ Beat that, Cheng _ .’

‘ _ Max? Are you alive? _ ’ Marinette asked.

‘ _ Alive and headed to the airport. _ ’

‘ _ Nice. _ ’ 

* * *

“Do you happen to know what Marinette meant by her team? You didn’t hire, like, twenty some odd lawyers did you?” Tim asked Bruce, who seemed to be somewhat concerned.

“I did not.” 

“Well then what the hell is she talking about?”

“Why don’t you ask  _ her,  _ then?” Tim just sighed, and headed back out again.

He spotted her scowling at some paper as she walked back into her office. He went to follow her in, and she shut the door in his face.  _ Ok then. I’ll try again another time. _

* * *

“What do you recommend for a type of cell phone?” Tim jumped. He hadn’t heard her come in. 

“What?”

“The broken one. It’s useless. What do you recommend I get for a new one?” It was a simple question, yet he was somehow baffled by this.

“I’m sure you can just ask, and someone here will get you a new one.” he went back to his desktop, annoyed she would interrupt him for something like that.

“I don’t want a company phone, I want a Marinette phone.” She grumbled. But she walked out, and he guessed the conversation was over. 

“Goodnight, Drake.” She yelled through his open door at the end of the day, and he frowned. She had talked his ear off for twenty minutes in the morning, then been basically avoiding him for the evening, and here she was announcing her departure. She certainly was a strange woman. 

“Good… night?” He tried. She was already gone. One day down, probably hundreds more to go.  _ This is just going to get weirder and weirder, I can feel it _ .

* * *

He heard a clattering sound on his desk the next morning, and looked over to see a bright red phone case sitting next to some papers.

“What’s this?” He frowned up at Marinette. He noticed she was holding a coffee that had at one point had a name written down on it, but was now scratched off. Did she steal someone’s coffee?

“I got a new phone.” She gave no indication of what she was feeling, her expression completely neutral.

“Ok?” He raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“So put your fucking number in it. In case I need to find you.” She deadpanned, and walked out sans cellphone. He wondered why on earth she would just leave her phone with a stranger. “The password is 1738.” 

Tim was tempted to go through everything she had added so far, see for himself what she deemed to be the most important things to add first, but ended up just opening her contacts instead. He found one for a Max which had a robot emoji next to it, a Sabrina with a funny hat and a magnifying glass, a Chlo-B DuPain In My Ass with a rainbow emoji, an Alya with a bunch of book emojis, and people she assumed were her parents. The last one was for a Nino, and a headphone emoji. 

He added himself as Tim since she didn’t really seem to put last names, and wondered what emoji he should put. He was tempted to put a bird, but went with the city skyline one instead. Maybe she could come up with something better. 

* * *

She had left her phone in his office as an excuse to either come back and get it, or make him come to her. She wanted to see what they would have to go with. 

By lunch of her second day, she had made it through two-thirds of the stack, listing them from most likely to least likely suspicious and going to run the second she showed up. Lex Corps was number one on the list as Most Suspicious And Likely To Run. 

“Hey.” Tim walked into her office as she ate a salad in a plastic box. She couldn’t tell if he looked amused or annoyed, and  _ that  _ pissed her off almost as much as it made her more attracted to him. “You left something in my office.”

“Did I now?” She feigned confusion. She noticed he didn’t have it with him. “Silly me. I guess I’ll have to come and visit you for it.” He tilted his head, but his expression remained the same. 

“Yeah. Come get it. It’s going off a lot and I’m about to throw it into a wall.” He smirked and she tried not to giggle at him. She choked in the process.

* * *

“Did it survive the day?” She leaned on his doorframe, refusing to come in.  _ Ah, so it’s a war game _ , Tim thought to himself, and leaned back in his chair.

“Barely. You got a lot of texts from an unknown number.” She cringed, and he snorted. “I’m just kidding. It didn't even go off once.” Her expression darkened, and he wondered how any criminal ever lived after being in the same vicinity as her. 

“Don’t do that to me.” She growled, and he wondered what to do next. 

“Sorry?” She reached her hand out, not moving away from the door, and making a face like she expected him to go give it to her. 

“Phone.” She said. Her dark expression faded, and replaced with something along the lines of evil. 

“Oh? You want it?”  _ Damn, why has she got to be like that? All ‘grr I’m gonna kill you’ one second, and then the next she’s playing around like she wants to- _

“Yeah. Give it.”

“You want me to give what?” He smirked. There was more than one joke-playing asshole in the building. 

“Give me the phone.” She wiggled her fingers about, her palm open. Her eyes said she wanted more than the phone. 

“What phone?” He gave her fake confusion. 

“Give me my phone.”

“This phone?”

“Yes, that phone, the red one that is mine, come over here and give it to me.”

“You want me to give you this phone that is red and yours?” 

“Yes.” He stood up from his chair, and walked halfway towards her. 

“So, to be clear, we are talking about this phone, right?” He lifted it up, and wiggled it a little bit.

“Give it. Now.” She held out her hand. He started to extend it towards her, but as her fingers started to curl around it, he pulled back away again. She gave him a blank expression, but he felt amusement behind her eyes. Like she knew something he didn’t. 

“You really want it?”

“Now, Drake.” She held her hand out again, but instead of extending her hand, she left her elbow anchored at her hip. “I don’t have time for games.”

“Cheng, you started this game.” He tried his best to stroll over to her casually, getting almost uncomfortably close,  _ almost _ , he could tell she was enjoying this, and dangled the phone in front of her face. She snatched it away from him. He tried to give her a smug look as he headed back to his desk, but she beat him to it, skipping across his floor.

“Sorry, I forgot,” She pulled a pen out of her pocket, gently placing it where the red phone had been moments before, and gave him a look of pure mischief, “I accidentally stole a pen from you earlier. Whoops.” She bumped her shoulder into him as she walked past him, and he was nearly frozen in shock.  _ Damn, this bitch. _

* * *

She collapsed onto the wall of the elevator as soon as the doors closed, and buried her face in her hands. 

“Fuck. Him.” She mumbled to no one in particular, knowing she was alone. 

“Marinette, what was that all about?” Tikki frowned at her. 

“I don’t know Tikki. I honestly don’t know.” Her cheeks felt hot all the way home. 

* * *

She walked into Tims office the next day with the intention of saying a snarky remark, but just frowned at what she saw. Tim looked a mess, his desk looked a mess, and his eyes seemed to be filled with hate and looking dead at the same time.

“Drake? What’s up with you?” She dodged a pen flying towards her face. 

“Broken.” He grumbled, slamming some papers down on his desk.

“What is? You?” She sipped her mocha frappuccino. He picked up on the sound, and jumped towards her. He grabbed her shoulders with both of his hands, and stared deeply at her. They were only even in height because of her chunky boots.

“Coffee. That’s got coffee in it. Please. Please. Cheng. Please. Give me your coffee.” She looked into what she thought were the eyes of a psychopath, and slowly handed him the icy drink. He sighed with relief, and ran off back to his desk with it.

“Well since you asked so nicely, I guess I won’t rip your hands off.” He wasn’ paying attention. He was aggressively sipping her abandoned frappuccino, not listening to a word she said. 

“Thanks Cheng, I owe you one.”

“You owe me, like, three for that.”

“Yeah. Three. Sure. Whatever. I’ll get you whatever you want. Thank you. So much.” She backed out of the office slowly, and made her way next door. Fucking with Tim could wait for another time. 

* * *

“What’s up with him?” Bruce was waiting in Marinette’s office for her, wondering where she was. 

“Tim? Oh, one of his brothers broke the coffee machine again. He was already very late and couldn’t stop for some on the way here. He gets like this every once in a while.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, I wanted to ask you about something he mentioned yesterday.” He noticed her flinch as she sat down behind the computer. 

“Let me guess, my joke about my team? And you want to know if you have to pay them too?”

“How… yes, that was what I was wondering.” Mr. Wayne frowned at her. 

“Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of. You just have to sit back and watch the magic happen.” He didn’t like that answer.

“I’m sorry?” She stopped what she was doing, and gave him a look that read  _ I’m going to kill you _ . 

“There are many ways to take a life away. One way is to make their heart stop. The other is a complicated series of events orchestrated by a mastermind to completely and utterly  _ ruin _ them.” He would never admit to having chills run up his spine, but it was true. She scared him. This tiny woman seemed to have won not just cases, but wars. He didn’t know exactly how true that was. 

* * *

‘ _ Yo. Where are you? _ ’ Marinette messaged Tim moments before she walked out of her apartment. It was only three blocks away from Wayne Tower, so she usually walked the distance. She had leased a bike for one year though, just in case. 

‘ _ On the road to work, why?’ _

_ ‘Coffee? For me?’ _

_ ‘What do you want, I’ll have someone pick it up _ .’ She frowned at her phone as she left the building. That wasn’t fair. 

‘ _ Well I was hoping you wouldn’t have the AUDACITY to ruin my morning routine, but HERE WE ARE- _ ’ She sent back. 

‘ _ Fine _ .’ It was quickly followed by a ‘ _ Where are you?’ _

_ ‘Headed to the Starbucks on seventh.’ _

_ ‘Ugh.’ _

_ ‘Hey! I don’t care if it's ‘industry’ to you, my neighbors would much prefer I don’t use a blender at home!’ _

_ ‘Acceptable. But on thin fucking ice.’ _

_ ‘Just like the ice chunks in my frappuccino.’ _

_ ‘Oh that was smooth.’ _

_ ‘Just like the ice chunks in my frappuccino’ _

_ ‘Ok now you’ve ruined it.’ _

_ ‘Just like the ice chunks in my frappuccino’ _

_ ‘Cheng what the hell _ .’

* * *

“Boo.” She kneed him in the side to get up to go order her drink. 

“How did you know that was me? I was looking the other way.”

“I can sense the lack of expression coming off of you a mile away.”

“I was literally facing the other way-”

“The suit gave it away.” She gently kicked him, and she headed towards the counter. She made ehr order, Tim paid, and they sat back down. They called her name moments later, and she grabbed it from the cashier to make their way to the entrance.

“Ugh, if one of these idiots misspells my name one more damn time, I swear that kid will be paying when I’m done with you.” She complained as they walked out the door. 

“Where are you going?” Tim frowned at her. 

“I’m… walking?” She responded, now walking backwards. 

“No you aren’t.” He pointed to a car, and she tried not to glare at him.

“I’m not?”

“No. You aren’t.”

“I can literally see the building. It’s basically right across the street.” She argued. It was not, she had gone in the other direction for coffee, and it was five blocks away.

“Get in, Cheng.” He practically growled at her, and she sighed, defeated, as she got in. 

“Fuck you.” She grumbled as she jumped in the passenger seat.

“Yeah, I know. I’m the worst.” He sighed as he got behind the wheel.

“No, though, really. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Yeah, well, I owe it to you.”

“Yeah, more like I should probably get one for every finger I so graciously didn’t rip off of your hands yesterday.” She grouched.  _ Wait, shit no, I take that back- _

“What?” She sighed, knowing it was too late. 

“Dude, I hate it when people touch my shoulders. It’s… I deadass almost killed you yesterday. Don’t touch my shoulders ever again.”

“Oh shit.” He mumbled. “I’m so sorry, I was really upset, but I still shouldn't have done that anyway.”

“It’s fine. You get a one-time warning.  _ Next _ time though…” She tried to sound lighthearted. But she knew he could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

“So, you want to talk about it?” He parked right next to the building, but didn’t get out. That was fine, it had tinted windows.

“Honestly? Not really.” He still didn’t move. “But it’s not like you could just search up anything that happened to me, either. It… it’s really hard to explain.” She closed her eyes, and wondered what the hell she was thinking. She had never talked about this in her entire life. It was her biggest nightmare, and she shared with only one other person. Alix. 

“What do you know about Akuma’s?” She tried. 

“What?”

“Nevermind.” She reached for the door, but hesitated. She squeezed the handle instead. 

“Marinette, if something is going on with you, I think I want to know.” She sighed, and aggressively leaned back in her seat. 

“Akuma’s. The little evil things that Hawkmoth made. My… my sister became one. She almost killed me. She was the only person in the whole world I thought wouldn’t do that to me, and she seriously almost killed me. There is no record of it because Ladybug and… Chaton created a whole new timeline where that didn’t happen instead. They had to, she destroyed over half of the earth trying to get to what she wanted. I… I wasn’t supposed to remember. But I do.” It wasn’t entirely untrue.

“Shit.” He said, and she just took a deep breath. 

“I lived in that alternate timeline for about a month. It was a total apocalypse, and… the worst month of my not-life.” 

“I…”

* * *

He wanted to tell her he understood. That he had watched his own family go insane on multiple occasions, and that he had to work really hard to bring them back. That was the whole reason he had become Robin in the first place. To help. 

But he couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t tell her he could help her out. He couldn’t act like a good friend, he met her less than a week ago. And now she was crying in his car about the timeline leaving her with memories. 

“That sucks.” He tried. She just nodded. 

“Yeah, honestly, it really does.” She pulled on the door handle, and her phone started to ring. “Sorry, Socks is calling.” She waved the red phone case, and got out. He nodded, then realised he was going to be even later if he didn’t follow her out. 

* * *

Max had a lead. He had a really good one. Sabrina was still waiting until next week for her first day, but was still able to work discreetly. 

Marinette dove into her work on the paper trail end, Max looking for the man through video feed and the FBI’s watchlist access, Chloé digging through Lex Luthor's work looking for the man, and Sabrina doing field work as Little Bee.

* * *

“Hey you.” Tim stood in her doorway. She grunted in response. “Are you feeling better than you did this morning?” She just made a humming noise. “Uh, I kinda felt really bad so I got you a chocolate bar.” He set it down on her desk, and she bit her lip. He wondered if she was ignoring him on purpose, when she jumped. 

“Ah! Tim! Good, you’re already here, you can take a look at this for me.” She kicked herself away from her desk in her rolling chair, and pointed to her desktop. He frowned at her. 

“Are you ok?”

“Doesn’t matter, look.” She insisted, and he looked at the screen. “Tell me if that looks like an exchange of sorts to you.” He looked at the screen, and frowned. That was security camera footage. How the hell did she-

“Oh.” He re-wound it, and watched it again. “Yeah, it does.” He frowned, and she cheered. 

“We have our grounds of investigation!” She jumped up, pumping both hands into the air, and dancing a little.

“Ok, two things. One, I got you a chocolate bar, two,  _ what the fuck _ ?” He looked at her like she was crazy.

“What?” She stopped cheering. 

“How did you _get_ that?”

“I asked nicely?”

“Marinette what the fuck.” She sighed. 

“Remember that team I told you about?”

“Oh don’t tell me.”

“Cancel tomorrow's coffee date, I’m headed to Washington DC. I’m meeting the FBI.” He shook his head at her. 

“I’ll let everyone know.” That was not his job. Why did he say that he would do that?

“Oh thank goodness. Love you, Tim.” She snatched up her chocolate bar as she ran out of the office.

“What?” He choked.

“I say that to all of my friends.” She called over her shoulder. She turned to look at him as the door opened. “You are my friend, right?” He paused.

“Yeah. I’ll be your friend.”

“Lit.” The doors closed.

* * *

She didn’t go down. Instead, she went up. She went to the roof, and pulled out her cellphone. 

“I hate how cold it is up here sometimes.” She complained to Tikki before transforming. 

“Yo.” Max answered in a blank tone.

“Yo yourself. Come get me.”

“On it.” A minute later, Pegasus opened a portal. She wondered where the other side was, before stepping through. 

Ladybug landed on a soft rug in a hotel room. She de-transformed, and saw Chloé giving her the middle finger from the other side of the room. 

“’Sup Socks?” She nodded at her. 

“This is for hanging up on me the other day. And also for calling me socks out of costume.”

“I can’t help it. You just look like a Socks.” She shrugged. 

“Are you two done?” Alya and Nino were sitting next to Max on the floor.

“Yeah. What do we got?”

“So now we have the video of the guy on the watch list I have so graciously been allowed access to, and now we have him talking and exchanging with a man working with Lex Luthor, although somewhat lowly. Or so it seemed.” Max started. 

“We take a look at the payroll and we see he is higher than anyone else in his department, which means…”

“He’s doing something the others aren’t.” Marinette finished, nodding. “Good. This is good.”

“Not for the good of the people, it isn’t. Sabrina deadpanned. Marinette hadn’t seen her beside Chloé.

“No, but it’s good for this case. We have plausible grounds for breach of contract, which warrants investigation. We’ll just have to say…”

“The FBI tipped you off.” Alya added.

“Shouldn’t it normally be the other way around?” Nino joked, and Sabrina snorted.

“So we look into why the guy was on the watch list in the first place, and-”

“Gun violence, gang related issues. Gun for hire, basically.” Max shrugged. 

“Cool. We have… oh that’s a lot. Now we just need to connect it to him directly.” They hatched up plans, Alya taking notes the whole time, Nino throwing out ideas so wild they might actually work, and Sabrina pointing out how dumb they all actually were. It was great having the little gang back together. Or most of it, at least.

* * *

The next day was spent mostly looking over Max’s shoulder, looking for anything she deemed useful. 

They named them Mystery Man One and Mystery Man Two. Number One was the one who worked directly under Lex, Number Two was the gun for hire. 

The two searched through nearly twenty years of security footage of this one guy, finding over two hundred instances of them together.

“This… this is going to take a while.” Marinette frowned. 

“You might want to go back to Jersey, get Sabrina running background checks on everyone she can find. You start running up other places and things to look into.” Maz advised her. 

“Yeah. Yeah, ok.” She mumbled, and they headed to transform to send her back to Gotham.

* * *

  
  


All these years later, and yet Ladybug still wasn’t sure how she felt about the miniskirt. It complemented her red gloves and boots well, but wearing a skirt with a turtleneck? Did she really think that low of herself?

She was just glad the magic stopped it from moving around too much when she swung around at high velocities. 

“Who the hell are you?” A small boy, probably a teenager, glared at her. 

“Ah, you must be Robin.” She debated sticking a hand out. This kid may have cut it off if she had. “I’m Ladybug.” 

“So _ you’re  _ Ladybug.” Red Robin popped up out of nowhere. He didn’t seem too terribly impressed. She wondered why. 

“Yes! I come from Paris, but now with the main enemy gone, I can start to work on… other matters.”

“Other matters?” Robin basically growled at her. “What kind of… other matters?”

“If I told you it would give me away.” She teased him, threw her yoyo, and in a flash she was gone. 

* * *

“I do not like this Ladybug character.” Robin grumbled as soon as she was gone. 

“Yeah? Me either.” Red Robin responded, but for a completely different reason. Bad first impressions all around. 

Especially since the conversation about her with Marinette, who for some reason didn't seem to be holding a grudge, even though she had every right to. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, though.”

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The length of a chapter depends on my moods.

“I’ve hit a wall.” Marinette slumped down in a chair across from him.

“Oh?” Tim kept typing. 

“Yeah.” Was all she said. 

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I was planning on staring at the ceiling like I normally do in my office in Paris, but… I can’t seem to find a way to shut the lights off. Either they’re connected to all the other lights on this floor and I would have to shut everyone’s lights off, or I’ll have to ask someone to break into the ceiling and take the lightbulbs out.” He stopped typing. 

“You what?”

“Well I can’t stare at a bright light now, can I?” She deadpanned. 

“Huh. I guess not.” Tim opened his email, and asked someone in tech to come and make her office lights separate from the rest of them and to add a lightswitch over the weekend. “So in the meantime, then?”

“Wait for inspiration to strike from either a new lead from… someone else… or I could, uh,” She paused. “Well the checks I’ve been following back to the source have all been signed by someone else, so I can’t directly connect it to him, but I could discreetly connect the checks to the order given to make them out. I guess… emails?”

“What  _ about  _ emails?”

“I’ll have her look through the emails, and send me anything suspicious. Thanks, Drake.” She stood up.

“Wait, what?” Tim looked up from his computer, but she was already gone. “Have _ who  _ send them? Marinette, who are you talking about?” She didn’t answer as she left. “Literally what the hell.” He mumbled to an empty chair.

* * *

Little Bee swung around Metropolis with her top. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, but she knew she would know it when she saw it. 

Eventually, she spotted an alleyway she recognized from a video file she had seen. 

She started to jump down from the rooftop when she noticed people in it. She put out a foot and a leg, suspending herself between two buildings, and used her free hand to get into her tactical belt. She pulled out a recording pen, clicked it to go, tied it to her top, and lowered it down like a fishing line. This hadn’t been normally part of her suit, she had gotten gadgets from Max that she had pulled together herself. Mini knife boomerangs that seemed suspiciously based off of batarangs, trackers, listening devices such as the pen, and various other little things. 

They didn’t notice her as they talked away, seemingly aggravatedly, and one of them finally stalked off. 

She reeled in back in, and headed back home to investigate what just happened. 

* * *

“Oh look, you’re back.” Marinette found Tim sitting in the same place he had been the last two times, and still gently nudged him even after he saw her. 

“Oh look, I am.” They did the same thing they had the last two times. She ordered something, he got nothing, they got in his car as she complained about the misspelling of her name. Then they went their separate ways and pretended nothing had happened.

She opened an audio file sent to all of them from Sabrina. 

* * *

‘ _ I’m telling you the boss is crazy for this _ .’ The first voice whines. 

‘ _ Don’t be saying things like that, you’ll get yourself in trouble _ .’ A deeper voice warned. 

‘ _ But Gotham is the Bat’s place, the boss would be insane to mess with him _ .’ She straightened up at this. 

_ ‘You need to learn to keep your mouth about what you think can and can’t happen. If you’re out, then get out. _ ’

‘ _ Fine. I’m out of this stupid museaum thing, then. _ ’

_ ‘You’ll learn now to be like that soon enough.’ _

_ ‘Oh fuck you _ .’

* * *

_ ‘Who was that on the device?’  _ Marinette messaged the chat.

_ ‘Looking through the cameras for facial recognition and pictures now.’ _

_ ‘Oh good.’ _

_ ‘I feel strangely left out of this, somehow.’ _ Nino added. 

‘ _ Don’t worry, Nino. You’re greatly useful as a strategist. And protecting us. _ ’ Marinette tried. 

‘ _ Not right now, I’m not. _ ’ He replied

‘ _ You’re protecting us from boogeymen. _ ’ Alya sent. 

‘ _ Oh for the last time, the boogeyman isn’t real _ .’ Marinette could sense the eye roll from Max through text.

‘ _ I know. That’s why I said boogeyMEN not boogeyMAN.’ _

_ ‘Oh for fucks sake you two _ .’ Sabrina finally sent them video clips along with zoomed in screen shots of their faces. 

‘ _ Oh shit I know that guy _ .’ Chloé was able to add. ‘ _ He works in what is supposed to be human resources.’ _

_ ‘Looks like he’s humanly resourcing some things from a heist.’  _

_ ‘Shut up sabrina.’ _

_ ‘No fuck you _ .’ 

Marinette pulled up a lost of all of the museums in Gotham. She needed to know which one was most likely to get hit by a crazy billionaire. Problem was, there were at least seven. 

Three art museums, three history ones, and a space one. She was able to rule out the aquarium. He (probably) didn’t want the giant octopus they newly got in. 

She frustratedly threw her phone down on her desk, and marched next door.  _ Damnit, he’s on the phone _ She sighed, and left. 

She threw herself down onto her office floor, and squeezed her eyes shut to block out the bright light. 

She thought long and hard. Maybe she could look for a common thread in past heists supposedly related to him, maybe narrow down the list of what he was looking for in the process. 

Maybe he had a thing for cups. Then she could rule it down to all the cups in a place. But that would require knowing specifically which heists he had orchestrated, and she didn’t know that. Argh, this was difficult. 

“You need something?” She blinked, and saw Tim downing down at her.  _ How the hell does he look hot even from such a stupid angle? _

“You know that legend about that silly bat signal?” She tried, not even bothering to sit up. She could tell he was trying not to laugh at her. “Think they would let me have a go at it?”

“What on earth do you want the Bat for?”

“Intel says someone’s planning a museum in Gotham, but they're planning it from Metropolis. I want it stopped before they even get here.” 

* * *

He stared at her as she layed on her floor like a starfish, talking about some intel and Batman.

“What intel?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just know I have very good friends in very high places.” She put her hands over her face, and he wondered exactly how high she ran.

“Yeah, obviously miss I-just-went-to-Washington-for-something-with-the-FBI-on-short-notice, I would think you have friends in high places, but this doesn’t tell me why-”

“Because it’s not entirely legal, dumbass.” Her voice was muffled through her hands, so she moved them. “It’s not really  _ il _ legal, I’m not dumb, but the intel source isn’t really somehtimg I can just throw around about knowing. It’s none of your damn business who it is, though.” For being one of the world's greatest detectives, Tim was at a complete loss with this woman. 

“I’m sure someone in the police department would love to-”

“No, they would ask too many questions. I need someone who would actually take this seriously. In France, I would  _ definitely _ go to the police no doubt, because they’ve learned to take me seriously, but here… no one knows who I am and what my methods are. No one really understands that I’m serious. I don’t think they would take me for my word.” She had a point. They wouldn’t. And Bruce was more likely to take her seriously than they would. 

Maybe Red Robin could get involved. Somehow. He wasn't sure yet, but he would find a way to worm his way into this. 

“Yeah. You’re right. But I don’t really think I can help in that department.” _ Oh bullshit. _

“Well, I wasn’t being completely serious, but thanks anyway.” She finally sat up, and reached for her phone. 

“What are you doing now?” He didn't mean to pry but, oh wait yes he did. He did mean to pry.

“Getting all information on Lex’s supposed past heists, or the ones they think are connected to him, see if there's a common thread, to try and narrow down the list of what I think he’s after, stop him before he gets here.”  _ Shit she’s hot AND smart. Like, REALLY smart. _ “Or, you know, stop him before he sits at home drinking tea and someone else gets here to do his dirty work for him. And then trace it all back to him. And connect past heists to him when I finally crack this crazy old man. And give him his death sentence.” She kept typing. “I just hope she can do it.”

“Who?”

“The detective.”

“What detective?”

“My detective.” 

“You mean like a private investigator?”

“Oh goodness no. I mean like someone much more competent.”

“You scare me, Cheng.” It was the truth. She did.

“Good.” 

* * *

Red Robin went out again that night, swearing up and down to his siblings he wasn’t looking for anything in particular. 

_ ‘You sure? Your movements seem to be strange today.’ _ Oracle teased him through the coms. 

“Fuck off.” He said as he jumped down into an alley. 

‘ _ Watch your language, Red. _ ’

“No.” He grumbled, and by some miracle he looked down in time to see Marinette crash into him. 

“No what?” She frowned, rubbing her head slightly. 

“Not you, these assholes.” He pointed to his head, and she nodded. 

‘ _ Who the hell are you talking to? _ ’ He didn’t answer Hood.

“Ah. Anyway, I should be- Hey wait a minute! I could tell you!” He pretended not to know what she was talking about.

“Tell me what?” 

“Someone I used to work with in Paris was recently in Metropolis, she said she heard something about people there planning an attack on a museum. It wasn’t like a regular heist, it was definitely an attack.”

“Thank you for your input, I’m sure I can look into it.” He went to take off, but she topped him. 

“Wait, no! I have more!” 

‘ _ Who the hell is this? _ ’ Robin didn’t have to be present to be scowling at them. 

“I dug deeper and I found that the man we’re looking into only ever exclusively tries to steal objects _over_ 500 million, so I narrowed down the list to about three items. I have no idea anything about a time frame, but I… oh hold on, it’s here somewhere…” She dug around into her bag, and pulled out a notebook. She flipped it open, and ripped out a page. “The things I think he’s after. One of them is a new arrival, I circled that one.” He was… impressed. “There’s more information on the back of the page.” She walked away without saying bye, and he realized people around were staring. 

‘ _ Oh wow. You got a fanclub, Red. _ ’ He noticed Nightwing watching him from across the street. He snarled at him, and took off in a different direction. 

‘ _ Who the hell was that? _ ’ Oracle asked. 

‘ _ I asked first _ .’ Robin grumbled. 

“I’ll tell you later. Not now.” He grumbled, and made his way back to the cave to look deeper into it. 

* * *

“Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” Bruce asked Tim as he fiddled with the computer in the batcave. He hadn’t even bothered to take the rest of the outfit off, just the cowl.

“Marinette. Your super-lawyer you hired. She has a detective working on this. And, apparently, a French FBI liaison officer. And god knows who else.”

“You can’t be serious.” Barbara looked back and forth between Tim and Bruce. 

“Dead serious, Babs. She has some insane connections.”

“Well, I guess she’s scary for a reason.”

“Not just her, all of them.” Bruce added. “I hired her for a reason. This is the reason.”

“You can’t seriously tell me you knew she could do this, did you?” Babs was getting more confused by the minute. 

“I was hoping.”

* * *

_ ‘Sabrina, how fast can you get to Gotham? _ ’ Marinette sent to the group chat. 

_ ‘I don’t know. Max, how fast can I get to Gotham _ ?’ She answered. 

_ ‘I’ll be done going through this stuff by nine. They’ve got me doing other things today.’ _

_ ‘I’ll be there after nine.’  _

“You’re still here?” Marinette frowned as she saw Tim sitting in the same seat as before. 

“What? I can’t buy a friend coffee?” He shrugged.

“I said three. You got me three. Deals done. Why are you still here?”

“No, you said I should owe you one for every finger you spared me. As far as I know, I still have ten fingers.” He raised up both of his hands, and wiggled his fingers around. 

“I said that as a joke.” 

“Well I didn’t take it as one.” He got up, and headed to the counter. “Are you coming?” 

“So, I met that Red Robin the other day.” She casually mentioned as they got into his car.

“Really? I heard he’s a bit of an asshole.” Tim tried to keep a neutral expression.

“People judge you based on the face you show them.” She thought about how wildly different the Red Robin she had met as Ladybug and the Red Robin she had met as Marinette had been.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah really.”

* * *

She had warned Sabrina not to teleport directly into her office since there were security cameras around. 

“Knock knock.” Sabrina walked in, and Marinette gave her a thumbs up. “Max got me the temporary spot at the GCPD for this specific investigation purposes for the next two weeks. It can be extended if necessary.”

“Oh fantastic.” Marinette finally looked up from her computer. “So you sent me all of the files from the past incidences, and put together all of the names and all of that, so we can search current live feed for facial recognition?”

“Yup.”

“Alright. I’m bringing my laptop, and headed with you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I love playing detective. It’s fun.” She grabbed a bag, and stood up.

“Oh, Marinette.” Tim popped up in the doorway. “And… Hi?” He frowned. 

“Boss Man Drake, this is Detective Sabrina Raincomprix. Detective, Boss Man Drake.”

“Boss Man?” He mumbled, but shook his head. “Anyway, where are you going?”

“To the GCPD. I finally got a good cop there. Someone who will listen to me.” She smirked at him, and he stepped out of their way. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I was going to say I was headed home for the day because of an issue there, and that I wasn’t going to be around.”

“Cool.” 

“Nettie, isn’t your job… here?” Sabrina didn’t even try to tell her to stop, and just followed her to the elevator.

“My job is to not let Boss Man Drake get screwed over by dimwits who crave money. And I’m going to be doing that job with you. At the precinct.”

“Whatever.” Sabrina sighed, and Marinette waved to a very confused Tim as the doors shut. 

“You’re not coming with me to watch me, are you?” The detective asked as soon as the doors were closed. 

“Nope.” 

“This has to do with…”

“Yup.”

“There’s nothing in that bag, is there?”

“Not a single thing.”

* * *

They watched footage, waiting for someone to pop up under facial recognition, and found someone fairly soon. 

“You got that?” Sabrina pointed it out to her, and she dashed out the door.

“Loud and clear.” The bag stayed behind. 

Now, Ladybug couldn’t just walk into a museum. That might be cause for some minot concern if a masked hero just bolted into a place. 

“You still go eyes on him?” She said as she took the badge she had ‘stolen’ from Max, flashed it at the gate, and headed in. 

_ ‘He’s still in the same room he was before. He seems to be looking back to that same artifact you kept mentioning, but it’s currently surrounded by people and he’s getting irritated. _ ’ 

“Thanks.” She made her way through the halls. She heard Sabrina start to talk to someone in the background, and she found the room she was looking for. 

Babs was monitoring the situation from home. They had suspected a sooner action rather than a later one, and he was headed home to help her in the Batcave. Just in case. 

Red Hood was already out in the field, and Robin didn’t have school on a Saturday. Even though it was daytime. They were given specific instructions not to be seen. 

“Ah, good, you’re here.” Oracle looked somewhat on edge. 

“What is it?”

“Someone’s there. He’s acting suspicious.” 

“I’m already out the door.” He grabbed his cowl, and headed back out, suit already one. 

“Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“We have a problem.” She yelled as he made his way to a vehicle.

“What?”

“You’re wonder lawyer just showed up. And she seems to know more than we do.” He swore loudly, and drove like a- well, he drove like a Robin out of the Batcave. 

* * *

‘ _ Marinette, what do you see? Why are you making that face? _ ’ She heard Max.

“Oh hello Max, I see you’ve hacked my in-ears.”

_ ‘I’m watching the outside. And a few blocks around it. There seem to be… _ ’ He paused. _'Marinette, get out.'_ He yelled. 

“What?” She frowned, and noticed her guy started to move towards an emergency exit.

‘ _ GET OUT OF THERE, NOW. _ ’ She ignored him, trying to catch up with the guy before he opened the door, but she didn’t make it in time. The door swung open, and a flood of armed men entered the building. She jumped behind a statue in order to miss the fire. 

“Fuck I should have listened to you.” She grumbled, looking directly up into a camera. She couldn’t transform. Too many eyes were watching. 

_“I can’t come and get you. If I showed up, and took only you with me, it would only look suspicious.”_ He pointed out.

“You must not be at work to be talking like that.”

_ “I’m not.” _

“Good. Come take these assholes out.” She heard a loud crash behind her, and was tempted to look. She did not, however, want to get shit in the face. That would not be fun. 

“Little Bee?”

_“Hold on Marinette, someone’s coming for you.”_ Sabrina said. That meant no. She was being watched by the GCPD, she couldn't get out.

_ “I’ll see if I can get Carapace and Rena, or maybe Chaton.”  _ Max added. 

_“I already made that call. It’s coming.”_ So Sabrina had messaged the group chat.

_“Oh good.”_ Max disappeared. A few moments later, a black hole opened up in the ceiling, and four heroes jumped out of it. Chaton and Pegasus, bulletproof to mortal weapons, started kicking the shit out of all the gunmen nearby. Carapace started to get civilians out, and Rena Rouge stopped them from getting away with the object.

When she heard the gun fire slow to a stop, but the shouting continued, she figured Chaton must have cataclysm the guns to dust.

* * *

Red Robin got there a little too late. There was gun fire echoing from the inside, and he made a loud crash as he jumped in through a window, Red Hood and Robin not far behind. Batwoman was closely following. 

‘ _ Oh look, Red Robin’s new girlfriend is here _ .’ Robin sneered through the coms.

‘ _ Wait, what? _ ’ Batwoman sounded a little pissed. 

“I swear to god I’m going to kill you.” Red Robin seethed. “She is not my girlfriend, but-”

_ ‘Who the hell are these people? That girl just turned a gun to charcoal!’ _ Red Robin didn’t have time to worry about that. He had to get Marinette out.

‘ _ Holy shit Red, your girl can kick ass. _ ’ He hesitated. He thought about the time she told him she had lived through the apocalypse and no one knew.

“First of all, not my girl, second, don’t you fucking  _ dare  _ mention that to her, or I will  _ kill you all with no hesitation _ .” He growled into the coms.

‘ _ Damn, Red Robin, what happened to you?’ _

“Me, nothing. Her however, you _ will not ask.  _ And we will not  _ ever _ speak of this again. Do I make myself  _ clear _ ?”

‘ _ As rain _ .’ Cass gave her one-line input for the night. 

‘ _ That's not the phrase, Black Bat _ .’ Red Hood teased.

“I don’t mean to bring it up again, but… I think she might have just killed someone.” 

“Wait, what?” He turned just in time to see her backflip away from a guy, and stab him with a sword she must have grabbed off of a display. She had hit him in the arm, not killed him, but he went down like a sack of potatoes in extreme pain, right next to a guy she had done the same thing to moments before. He was almost in awe. 

“Behind you!” Batwoman leaped over the top of him, and he heard a sickening crunch behind him. “Awe shit. I think I broke one of his ribs. That’s gonna hurt.” He took off again, whacking some more people with his staff, and knocking them out cold. 

“You know, if you keep whacking the same guys over and over, one of these days you’ll kill them from brain damage while passed out.” Marinette jumped onto a guy knocking him to the ground, and she drove her sword into his shoulder. “Make them pass out from pain, they’re less likely to have permanent brain damage.”

“Pretty sure that display says ‘do not touch’ on it.”

“I’m pretty sure it says ‘in case of emergency’ underneath that, just in, like, really tiny letters.”

_ ‘I like this woman. She has my vote to stay.’ _

_ ‘Robin you hate everyone.’ _

_ ‘Yeah, but she stabbed a guy. She is allowed to stay.’ _

* * *

Mariette whirled and slashed at the people around her as she made her way through the room. Sure, she felt a little guilty about using an old sword, but hey. This was an emergency. People were probably going to die. 

She wondered if she would actually be able to save people not affected by magic. It’s not like she could find out right now, she was trapped in her as herself for the moment. 

‘ _ Marinette, get out of here _ .’ Chaton said. She wondered now hoe Chloé had also gotten onto the coms. They sued different ones as heroes than they did as civilians. She figured she must have put it in after transforming. 

“I’m having the time of my life, Chaton.” She argued. She ducked as Red Robin got punched in the face, and fell over. She caught him, and pushed him back towards his enemy. Maybe not the nicest thing to do, but he could handle himself.

‘ _ One of these idiots could kill you. _ ’ Rena Rouge pointed out. 

“Oh come on.” She grumbled. “There are, like, four left.”

‘ _ Nettie, I’m coming for you next. _ ’ Carapace said in a warning tone. 

“Hey, are you ok?” Red Robin, out of enemies, turned to her.

“Oh fuck off.” She said to Carapace.

“Excuse me?” Red Robin tilted his head at her.

“Not you.” She gave him a blank expression, and pointed to her head. “These idiots.” There was a pause between them, and the both started to laugh. 

“What?” Batwoman gave them a funny look. 

“Inside joke.” Marinette shrugged, and Batwoman just shook her head as she walked away to start cleaning up the mess. 

* * *

“So, are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” 

“You need to go.” Red Robin, ever the territorial person,  _ immediately  _ disliked the green guy for trying to pull away Marinette while he was talking to her. 

“Fun killer.” She gave Greenie a look that made him think that this wasn’t their first time meeting. He figured he must be one the heroes from Paris. That made him dislike him even more. 

They started to walk away together, but only got a few feet before getting cut off by a fuming Chaton. He didn’t like Chaton either. Sure, all he really knew about them was what Marinette told him, but the whole ‘apocalypse’ thing really was what made him dislike them. He didn’t like that they were at fault for something that had really hurt her. He didn’t know her very long, but he liked her that much already. 

Chaton seemed to be yelling at her. Marinette seemed to have said something about doing her job back. Chaton told her that her job was to not die like an idiot and that… the team still needed her?

“Do we have a problem here?” He walked up to them.

“No.” They spoke at the same time, and he jumped. They both gave him icy glares, and he backed off. 

“You need to cool it, Socks.” Marinette growled, and they left along with the green guy. Wait a second-

He flashed back to that day in his car. 

‘ _ Sorry, Socks is calling. _ ’ She had said. Marinette had Chatons number. Marinette knew her personally. She might even know her identity.

That made him feel a little bit better. 

But not very much. 

* * *

Marinette walked into work the next day slightly late, unable to get a ride from Tim since he had messaged her he was going to be late himself. 

After a few hours of digging through her new evidence, she heard a sound come from next door and realized Tim was here. 

“Hey Tim, I think my whole problem of wondering where to catch him has been-” She froze when she saw he had a bruise on his face. “Who did that?” 

“What?” He looked up from his computer. “Oh, I fell.” She scoffed at him. 

“You think I’m dumb enough not to know the different types of bruises? You didn’t fucking fall. Someone hit you.” He cringed, but she continued, “I can see the outlines of the different impact points, and also the angel is literally impossible for a fall, so unless you fell upside down, and onto something rigid and lumpy, you got punched in the face.” Tim looked guilty of something. She wanted to know what. “Don’t ever fucking lie to me like that again. Now tell me: Who. Hit. You.”

“I…” He wiggled slightly, and she sighed. 

“You know what, don’t tell me.” She growled, and walked back out. She was mad. She wasn’t mad that he didn’t want to tell her, she was mad that someone had hit him in general. This was one of her friends. She had grown strangely attached to him. Attracted, too, but that was a problem for another time. 

* * *

As soon as she walked out, he knew this was going to end in disaster. Not even just this particular incident, the whole experience of having her next door to him. He knew she would eventually get a little bit too close to him with her connections, and he might have to tell her… everything. Or she would put it together herself. 

She was too smart. 

He couldn’t hide from her forever. Anyone else, sure, but not her. It was only a matter of time. He could only stall for so long.

* * *

Chloé sighed as she sifted through piles of papers. Her fun little ‘undercover’ job was a little more difficult than she was willing to admit. She _ never  _ would, she wouldn't let Marinette have the satisfaction of thinking she was the smarter child. That would ruin her forever. 

She finally found all of the emails that went directly from Lex Luthor, and started to dig. She made copies onto a drive as fast as possible, along with all of the encryption codes just like Max had taught her to do, and quickly locked herself in her office’s bathroom. 

“Plagg, claws out.” She whispered, transforming. She twisted off the end of the baton, shoved the flash drive into it, and sealed it in. “Claws in.” She whispered, and walked out of the bathroom. She knew she wouldn;t be able to hide the fact that she had been diggin, but they couldn't prove that she made copies of just about everything from the last five years without the evidence. 

“Miss Dupain?” A secretary entered the room, looking small and sweet. Chloé knew she was anything but. 

“Yes?” She asked from the other side of her desk. 

“Hi, I’ve been notified you’ve been looking through personal emails, and I want to know why?”

“Oh, looking for evidence against a claim made by a woman against Mr. Luthor, and since the emails are time stamped, I was using those to be able to prove his time and location.” She had prepared the excuse. 

“Ah. Thank you.” She nodded her head, and bowed out. Now that they knew she was digging, she started the process all over again with a second drive. She was glad her outfit had pockets. She was going to need lots of places to hide the evidence. 

* * *

Marinette found Tim back in his normal spot before work that morning. They didn’t say much as they went about their normal routine, and headed into work. 

But before she got out, she hesitated. 

“Hey, Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“You know I give a shit about you, right?”

“Yeah?” He tried to hold back a laugh. 

“So if someone ever tries to hurt you like that again, I’ll kick their ass in court, ok?”

“Ok.” He nodded, and they went their separate ways as normal. 

* * *

That night, Marinette couldn’t sleep. Usually, when she couldn;t sleep back at home, she climbed up onto her roof and enjoyed the night time. But here, she had no roof access even though it was a tall building there just wasn’t any. So she transformed into Ladybug, crawled out the window, found a nice hidden place to de-transform, and breathed in the coldness of the city. 

It smelled much different than Paris. Not really in a bad way, it was just different. It had more machine oil, more chemical residue. Less food, less sugary scents. 

“Uh, hello?” She looked over to see Red Robin again. 

“Hi.” She smiled, and patted the cement next to her. 

“How on earth did you get up here?”

“How did you?” She teased as he sat down. There was something off about him. She couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Fair point.” He nodded. “I never did get to say thanks, by the way.”

“What for?” Ok, she definitely knew this guy. She could hear familiarity in his voice.

“What do you mean what for? For the heads up, for the information, for the deeper insight than just the ‘ _ hey someones coming be on edge _ ’ that we usually get.”

“Well, stopping people is my job. But yeah, my friends can be pretty good at what they do.” She nodded. She decided trying to figure him out would be a problem for another time. 

“Your friends?”

“Well, as I have said before, there are many ways to take a life away.” She started.

“Take a life away?”

“One way is to make their heart stop. The other is a complicated series of events orchestrated by a mastermind to completely and utterly  _ ruin _ them.” 

“Huh.”

“I’m pretty good at both of those things, but I can tell you I  _ much  _ prefer the second option.”

“I think I’m glad you prefer the second. That makes my life a little easier.” She laughed. “So, how do you orchestrate your master plans?”

“Like I would give my secrets away.” She snorted.

“Awe. Damn. At least I tried.” She got quiet for a moment. 

“You get the evidence by any means necessary, but you watch your back as if the whole world were out to get you because you never know. That’s my first piece of advice. But it’s something you probably already know.”

“You really think the whole world?”

“You have to be extra thorough. When you act like a crazy lady in a courtroom, people will look for  _ any  _ reason to discredit you. Never take you seriously. They want a reason to make you look like you don’t know what you're doing, like you’re an idiot. I’ve learned not to trust anyone.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Marinette looked over at him. 

“You realize I could push you off of this roof right now? And yet you're sitting next to me anyway? How do you explain that as not trusting anyone?” He game a small laugh,

“Ok fine. I might trust you a little bit. But only a little!” She laughed again. “You know, I never caught your name. When you gave me the paper, or when you stabbed a guy in the exhibit.”

“I never threw it.” She shrugged. 

“Well… can you throw it now?”

“Marinette.” She reached a hand out. 

“Cool. I’m-”

“Red Robin. Yeah. I know.”

“You know?” She blushed. 

* * *

“No being armed in my office.” Marinette gave a dead look down at the teenage boy, who pouted. “Not unless I’m armed as well.” He picked his head up, not smiling but no longer scowling either, and considered her rule.

“Fine.” He took off one of his katana’s, and set it down on her desk.

“Thank you.” Marinette nodded cordially, and he nodded back. She picked it up, and set it on her knees. “Now, what are you here for?”

“I’m here to invite you to dinner seeing as Drake is too much of a pussy to do so himself.”

“Damian!” Tim yelled as he pushed his way in. “I’m so sorry about him, he’s… actually he’s always like this, he’s never  _ not _ like this, but-”

“No, he has a point.” Marinette turned her neutral expression onto Tim.

“I’m sorry, he what?”

“The lady thinks I have a point, Drake. About you being too scared to invite her over. Tt, keep up.” Damian smirked at him.

“I’ve been working for you for almost two weeks, gotten coffee with you nearly every morning for one week, you give me a ride here, and yet you can’t even be bothered to hang out with me? Oh how dare you. I’m so offended.” 

“Marinette, what the hell?” She gave him the smallest smile, letting him know she was just messing with him, and he glared at them. 

“Invite her over, Drake.” Damian crossed his arms. 

“Fine.” He snarled at his younger brother. “Marinette, you want to come over later for dinner with all of us since apparently that’s something you need to do?”

“Why yes, I would love to.”

“Great. One would think you two almost planned this together or something.”

“We didn’t.” They said at the same time. “We promise.”

“Double jinx.” Tim mumbled as he left. 

“If you’re leaving, do you want this back?” Marinette held up the sword. He seemed to ponder this.

“No. because then if you always have it, then I can always bring one. And you won’t be able to tell me no.” She laughed at the kid. 

“Smart kid.” She reached over, and stuck it in her umbrella rack. It had no umbrellas in it. “Thanks.” The kid nodded, and left. 

* * *

“Hey Demon Spawn, where did the other nasty thing go?” Jason asked as Damin got back on the elevator.

“Marinette took it.”

“What?” He stopped chewing his apple, and frowned. 

“She said I wasn’t allowed to have _two_ if she didn’t have _one_ so I gave it to her.”

“Oh.” He resumed his confused chewing. “So, how did it go?”

“She’s coming over tonight.”

“Fucking fabulous.” Jason grinned at the closed doors.

* * *

She stood in front of her closet, and wondered what she should wear. Casual? Business casual? Fancy? No, definitely not fancy. Maybe… 

She grabbed a pair of black leggings, a black button down shirt, a yellow tie and a yellow skirt. She threw on a pair of her signature gigantic platform boots but with yellow designs on them this time. She put up her hair, and incorporated yellow ribbons into her blue hair to match the skirt shoes and tie. 

“You look great Marinette!” Tikki encouraged her. 

“Thanks, Tikki!” She smiled as the kwami peeked out from her backpack. She grabbed her red motorcycle helmet, pulled her backpack onto her shoulder, and headed out. 

She was almost convinced she had the wrong address when she drove into the woods for nearly five minutes straight. 

But eventually the trees cleared and she saw a huge mansion. She was so surprised she almost crashed. Almost. 

She pulled up in front of the door, and saw an older man waiting for her. 

“You must be Miss Cheng.” He opened the door for her, and she nodded.

“Nice to meet you!” She extended a hand. He seemed surprised, but shook it anyway.

“Ah, you’ve met Alfred.” Tim popped up out of nowhere, and she jumped. 

“Actually, I didn’t get his name.” She turned to say something, but he was already gone. “How the hell did he-”

“Yeah, he does that.” Tim just stood awkwardly, not really knowing what to do. 

“Hey.” A guy with light gray streaks and wearing a leather jacket inside appeared from behind him. He was a little taller than Tim, but not by much. She wondered if he had the streaks because he was an e-boy. She hoped he wasn’t. “Wait a second, you don’t look nearly as scary as he said you were.”

“I’m only scary if you’ve seriously broken the law.” She snorted.

“So Jay, you should be much more terrified.” A third guy snorted. “Dick.” He reached out to her, and she shook his hand. “And this ass is Jason.”

“Nice to meet you, ass named Jason.” She smirked as she tried to shake his hand.

“Oh Replacement you’ve really done it this time.” Jason glared at Tim as he did actually return the handshake. 

She gave Tim a confused look, but he just stalked away from them. 

“What, am I just supposed to find my way around without you?” She made a scene about looking for a coat hanger to put her helmet on. 

“There is fine.” Dick showed her a shelf, and she set it up on it.

* * *

“Ah Marinette, glad to see you’ll be joining us this evening.” Bruce nodded at her. She smiled, and wondered where to sit at such a huge table. Did they have, like, specific seats or something?

“Here.” Tim sensed her confusion, and pointed across from himself. 

“Cool.” She sat down, and tried to stare at anywhere but at him. 

“So, how is business?” Damian sat next to Tim, and gave her a blank expression. She figured the kid was just like that. She decided to humor him.

“Well, even though I’m here I’m still head of everything at home in Paris, which is running smoothly. We currently have seventeen open cases among the twenty currently available employees, not counting staff, of course, with some people working the same case. Currently, we have one case that’s a bit tricky, since it’s against a diplomat, but she’s doing some… questionable things, and we’re looking to have her status taken away so we can properly prosecute her, but… It’s not going too well.”

“Hm.” Damian nodded, listening carefully. Ella and Etta would never pay this much attention to her at this point. 

“Are you interested in law?”

“No, I’m more into what Father does, but law is still interesting.” _ Ah. _

“Well, I’m sure I could have you take over for Chloé and I while we’re both out.” She smiled at him jokingly. He lit up, almost as if he thought she was serious. 

“That could be fun.” He maintained a serious expression, and she wondered what this kid had gone through to find running a law firm fun. She did it to keep evil people away. 

“You’re both out?” Tim asked, and she gave him a smirk.

“Yeah. She’s keeping the back door closed.” He dropped his fork.

“Marinette you did not.” 

“Yup.”

“Keeping the… What the hell are you talking about?” Dick frowned at them. 

“Chloé is currently… digging into some things for me.” Marinette smiled proudly as she bit into her salad. 

“What kind of things?” Bruce asked. 

“I try not to give secrets away.” Marinette responded after she swallowed her bite of lettuce. “But I will neither confirm or deny if you start asking theories.” 

“Is she working for Lex?” Damian tilted his head at her. 

“Wow. That was a… fast reflex.” She nodded. 

“Oh no way.” Dick laughed. 

“Remember, this is all hypothetical.” Marinette teased them, and Tim just sighed dramatically. 

“Marinette, if he catches wind of this, he’s gonna kill her.”

“Oh please.” Marinette rolled her eyes. “Chlo B would get into a fight with an atom bomb with hand-to-hand combat and win.”  _ If she used her cataclysm. And wore the suit. _

“Seriously?” Jason raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a miracle she hasn’t killed him first, to be quite truthful.” She snorted. She went to take another bite, and didn’t notice everyone else sharing a look between themselves. 

“So, what’s the biggest difference between Paris and Gotham so far?” Barbara tried to change the conversation. Marinette snorted. 

“I’m honestly shocked how many people think that Gotham is more dangerous than Paris.” She laughed. She genuinely laughed. The whole table around her just stared at her like she was crazy. “I mean, yeah, it’s a lot more difficult to bring someone back from the dead here, unlike in Paris, but still.” She shrugged. She didn’t notice they had no idea what she meant.

“Um, what the fuck?” Dick broke the silence. 

“Oh, yeah, I guess if you’ve never witnessed the Miracle Cure bring someone back to life, then it would be a little difficult to understand, but still. In Paris, seeing someone die on the street from being caught in a battle and then get brought back at the end of the fight is just your average Tuesday in Paris. Or your average any day.”

“What fight?” Bruce asked. It was what they were all thinking. 

“Between Ladybug, Chat Noir and their enemy Hawkmoth?” She tilted her head at him. “Oh, do you not know?”

“No. No we didn’t know.” Damian deadpanned. 

They knew about Gabriel being a terrorist, they didn’t know about the magic aspect of it.

“Oh!” She pulled out her phone, to show them videos from the Ladyblog. “Ok, so, I kinda don’t really know a lot about it, I wasn’t super into the whole  _ magic is real _ thing, so I’m not really the person to ask, but from what I know, it’s like, they have magic jewelry, I think? And they all have, like, one special ability that’s connected to the jewelry, but not the person. So it’s not like the person themselves are magic, the magic is able to pass from person to person.”

“Like…”

“Like Green Lantern, but… better.” She noticed Cass choke on her lettuce trying not to laugh at that comment.

“Who are they?” Tim peered closer at her screen, and Damian yanked him back so he could have a better view.

“The one that looks like a cat and has white gloves and boots is Chaton Noir, she has a magic ring that gives her the ability to destroy anything she touches. The turtle is Carapace, he can create indestructible shields. Rena Rouge is the fox, she can create illusions of any size, from little cookie crumbs to entire amusement parks. It’s really cool, until you touch it. Then it just disappears.”

“What about the red one? With the cute skirt?”

“That’s Ladybug, she has a yoyo that can do basically anything, it’s pretty cool. Her power is that she can summon random objects that help her in a fight. The others, that aren’t in this video, are Viperion, who has snake powers to return to one fixed point in time, as many times as necessary, and it’s called ‘second chance’.”

“How do you know what it’s called?” Tim gave her a funny look.

“Uh… I may or may not have dated him briefly. It was pretty strange. He kept disappearing randomly, and I couldn’t figure out why, it was pretty funny.” _ Bullshit. That is bullshit and you know it _ . “But we’re cool now. He works with my friend- uh, nevermind. Don’t worry about that.” She almost slipped. But she didn’t. Dick raised an eyebrow at her, but she continued. “The dragon is Ryuko. She can turn into either water, air, or, I think, uh, earth? Maybe? Not sure. Anyway, she has a secondary power of being able to teleport. It’s pretty cool. And there’s Little Bee, she has a literal killer spinning top that can immobilize Akuma’s.”

“Akuma’s?” The video ended, and she picked a different one.

“Yeah. Akuma’s.” She shuddered. “They fight a villain who stole the butterfly powers and the peacock powers. The butterfly can turn people into villains against their will if they have a strong negative emotion. The Akuma can manipulate and utilize this emotion to make someone crazy. That’s what Ladybug and Chaton are for. To find the thing that caused the strong emotion, destroy it, and bring them back to mortality.”

“No kidding, huh?” Dick stared at her phone screen as she talked. Tim was looking at her fearfully. 

“That’s why I said I think Paris was more dangerous than Gotham. It’s hard to think of this place as dangerous when you have to constantly keep yourself under control so you don’t go crazy and start killing people at random against your will.”

“You sound very casual about this, and that concerns me.” Bruce gave her a sad look.

“It’s hard to be emotional about anything after being, and I mean this in the most literal sense possible, emotionally held hostage. I haven’t even gotten to that stupid peacock yet.”

“Oh yeah, you did say there were two, didn’t you?” Damian flicked his attention between her and her phone. 

“The peacock was… scary. It created huge senti-monsters that were much harder to defeat than the Akuma’s. It was… it was pretty scary.”

“I can imagine. I’ve been around when some villains attack, that can be scary to be caught between.” Dick nodded at her, and she realised the second video ended. She didn’t pick a third. 

* * *

Tim wanted to hug her. He had thought it may have been pretty bad, he didn’t know it had been that bad. He wished Red Robin had been able to help sooner.

“So excuse me if thinking some lunatic who thinks he’s better than he really is and occasionally uses bombs, is somehow  _ not  _ scarier than someone who can take control of my mind from halfway across the city with magic butterflies.” He wanted to hug her and never let her go. She had been through something probably worse than all of them. And 99% of the people at this table were orphans. 

“Yeah. Point taken.”

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why the fuck are my chapter lengths so... inconsistent?

_ Everything was desert.  _

_ Except… it wasn’t.  _

_ It wasn’t sand, it was disintegrated charcoal.  _

_ Everything looked like it had been burned, but there was no sign of a fire. No smog, no smoke, and clear blue skies.  _

_ She hated that blue sky.  _

_ She hated staring up at it as she laid there with claws digging into her shoulder.  _

_ “This would be much easier if I didn’t have to drag you.” Chaton Blanc growled.  _

_ “Please. Let me go.” She choked. She hated fighting Chaton the most.  _

_ “No. We’re going. We’re going far away, away from all of this, away from the misery, where we can be alone and no one can hurt you.” _

_ “Chloé, please…” _

_ “There is no Chloé. There is no Hawkmoth. I killed him. He’s dead. He’s been cataclysmed. By me.” _

_ “I…”  _

_ “I saved you, Mari-Fel! I saved you from him! And from the other bitch, too! Aren’t you proud of me?” She felt the rubble beneath her calf as they went along.  _

_ “You’ve killed everyone…” Ladybug choked.  _

_ “I killed people who could hurt you. And me. So we can run away and be safe together and nothing will ever hurt you ever again.” _

_ “That’s not the way we do things, B. You have to… you have to let me bring them back.” _

_ “No! They’ll only hurt you more! You don’t want them to hurt you, do you?” _

_ “I can take care of myself. Please…” She looked up into Chatons bright green eyes. She hated those green eyes. They were supposed to be blue. Why weren’t they their normal comforting blue? _

_ “No.” _

* * *

“Hey, Mari-Fel.” Marinette jumped as she saw Chloé sitting in her chair. 

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Marinette hugged her sister, excited but confused. 

“Oh, you know. You work here. And I was around for some clean-up work I was hired to do.”

“Ah. How is the cleaning up going?”

“What a shame I’m accidently going to accidentally make a tragic mistake and the press will somehow accidentally end up with a strange amount of details about the incident.” She smiled. 

“Oh, that will be tragic. I send my regards in advance.” Marinette shooed her out of her seat, but Chloé just reached for the umbrella rack instead. 

“Want to tell me what this is all about?”

“Ah, it’s a long story involving Tim’s teen brother. Basically, I told him he wasn’t allowed to have two if I didn’t have one and so he gave it to me.”

“That does sound very _ you _ , doesn’t it?”

“Now move, I have a meeting to get to.” Chloé huffed as she moved the chair out of the way so Marinette could get to her files she needed to grab. 

“Bye, Mari-Fel.”

“You better not be there when I get back.”

“No promises.”

* * *

Tim had a bad feeling about something, but he couldn’t figure out what. He figured out exactly what, however, when he saw a serial asshole walk into the conference room. 

“Darling, get me a green tea with two sugars, do you mind?” He waved his hand at Marinette. She glared at him. 

“No, fuckwad.” She growled, moving away from him. Tim, with his fantabulous detective skills, saw the disaster unfold before it did as he made his way towards her, knowing what was about to happen next. This was going to be more than a little difficult to explain. 

The man started to try and be ‘nice’ by reaching out to touch her shoulder. Before he could, however, Tim reached her in time to smack the man's hand away, and pull Marinette towards his other side by wrapping a hand around her waist. 

“Don’t touch her.” He growled, and the man feigned innocence.

“Dude?” Marinette gave him a slightly confused look, and he let go.

“Watch out for him.” Tim mumbled in her ear as he moved away.

“Oh.” 

* * *

He was right. She had needed to watch out for that guy. It didn’t help when halfway through Choé decided she could barge in, with news from Max.

“There’s an emergency.” Chloé whispered, and this asshole just so happened to overhear it. 

“What on earth could she do in an emergency? You should have someone more appropriate, like me, handle an emergency situation. I am the original man in charge of lawsuits here, don’t you remember?”

“More qualified?” Marinette glared at him. “Than both of us?”

“Well of course I am.”

“Than both of us combined?” Chloé repeated, offended by the nerve of this man. 

“Clearly, if you have to repeat it.” He scoffed. 

“Alright then.” Marinette stood up from her seat.

“Let’s go.” Chloé crossed her arms. The table around them remained silent. Marinette tried to ignore the silently freaking out Drake.

“Well then, you must have graduated from school four years early-

“Had four years of university experience before going to Harvard-”

“Where you must have gone to for eights years-”

“In a country where you don’t even natively speak the language-”

“To get a sum total of four PhD’s-”

“Passed the bar exam in eight different countries-”

“Oh, and don’t forget extra curriculars-”

“In both Paris and Massacheusets-”

“Where there is a wild time difference-”

“To be even  _ equal _ to both of us combined.” Chloé finished. The man seemed to be nearly purple in the face. 

“Excuse me, I have an emergency to attend to. Sorry for wasting your not-so-valuable time.” Marinette stalked out of the room. 

* * *

  
  


Ladybug was sitting on a rooftop, far away from her apartment, when she saw a large black figure move out of the corner of her eye.

“Hey.” She yelled, thinking she wouldn’t get an answer.

“Who are you?” A gruff voice asked. 

“No one you need to be overly upset about seeing.” She retorted, not looking away from the scenery in front of her. 

“Who are you?” He repeated.

“My name is Ladybug,” She sighed, “And I’m not a threat. So stop treating me like one. Please.”

“Prove it.”

“No. You do your damn homework.” She jumped over the edge, and disappeared. She made her way towards a large bridge, and pulled herself up to the top.

She hugged a steel beam on top of the bridge, and admired the pattern of the city. The way the lights danced on the water, how the moon seemed to be a little too big to the point it was almost suspicious, and the way the cars moved almost fluidly underneath her. 

“You always were ever the dramatic.” 

“Chaton Noir. Glad you could join me.”

“Always.”

  
  


* * *

Tim had a strange nightmare. It wasn’t abnormal for a traumatized person to have weird nightmares, but this one really… took the cake in terms of strangeness.

For starters, he was in a girls body. Check one for weird. 

Second, it wasn’t in english. He almost always dreamed in english. Check two for weird. 

And third, well… he, or rather, the person whose point of view he was watching from, was a type of angry he’d never felt before.

_ “I can’t believe you would just hurt me like that! _ ” Some girl started to cry in front of her. 

“ _ I didn’t hurt you, you walked down those stairs and pretended that I pushed you! _ ”

“ _ What is going on here? _ ” A large man appeared behind them. Suddenly, the girl was filled with fear.

The image changed, and he saw Chaton Noir on a roof.

“ _ You can’t keep letting her do those things to you! You’re going to get seriously hurt! _ ”

“ _ I can take a hit! _ ” The girl yelled back. 

“ _ Just because you can doesn’t mean you should! _ ”

“ _ Come on. We’re leaving _ .” The body cried out in pain as the image shifted again. She was being dragged by her shoulders. He couldn’t control her actions. He could only watch. But he felt her pain, and heard her voice. 

_ “No! I can’t let you take me away! You have to listen to reason, please! _ ” She yelled.  _ Wait a second, this is Cheng’s voice _ , He realized

“ _ I did listen to reason, and reason said to protect you _ .” The girl looked upwards, and he saw who was causing the pain. It looked like Chaton, but… different. She had green eyes instead of blue, and her outfit was completely white.  _ Wait a minute, am I… am I Marinette right now? _

“ _ Chloé! _ ” The girl screamed. The person in the cat costume, presumably Chloé, squeezed harder. He felt the pain of the claws digging into her skin.  _ This must be what Marinette had mentioned when she said her sister got Akumatized, whatever the hell that meant.  _ He wondered where the real Chat Noir and Ladybug were. Their suspicious absence made him angry. 

He watched through her eyes as she looked around at all the ashes and rubble. He felt an unbearable amount of sadness in both herself and him.  _ So that’s what the apocalypse looked like… _ There was no way to tell what part of earth they were even on, there was just so much damage. There was nothing but damage as far as he could see. He could feel nothing but damage, pain, suffering, sadness, and anger. 

* * *

He woke up choking. 

“Damn Replacement, you all good?” Jason was sitting in a chair in his bedroom, peeling an orange. 

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“I heard screaming. I came to check on you. You stopped, and I was already here so I stayed.”

“Asshole.” Tim grumbled as he got up to get a shirt. 

“I’m here because I care.”

“Care about being a pain in the-”

“What are you two doing?” Cass mumbled from the doorway.

“Oh wow, Cass is here.” Jason applauded her. “Timbo here has yet to look at the clock and realize it’s only three a.m. and that he doesn’t actually have to get up yet.” Cass gave Tim a funny look, and he threw a knife into Jason's orange. “Rude.” He pulled the knife out, and tossed it onto Tims bed. 

“Suck my ass.” Tim flopped back down, after removing the knife, and struggled to fall back asleep. “Dammit.” He mumbled, and sat up three hours later, not having fallen back asleep, to go pick Marinette up from the coffee shop. 

Tim was looking at her strangely all morning. She wondered what had gotten into him, and thought he must still feel guilty about having grabbed her randomly the day before.

“You know, when we finally get through all ten of these coffee’s, what do you think will happen next?” He asked her. 

“I pretend not to notice and you keep buying anyway?” She teased, her heart not fully in it.

“Try again.”

“Uh, I find a way to trick you into feeling guilty and you keep paying anyway?”

“Hm.” He pretended to consider this. “Nope, try again.”

“You pick me up here afte _ r I  _ pay anyway?” She put a little more effort into being entertaining. 

“Close.” He nodded. “I think I can work with coming and getting you here everyday.” She was almost concerned when he pulled out into traffic and almost hit someone. 

“Tim, are you ok?” She wondered aloud. She hadn’t really meant to ask. 

“Not in the slightest, why?”

“Ah, ok.” She nodded. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Uh, barely why?”

“You keep looking at me funny.” She swore he cringed. 

“Uh, I don’t know, I think… I think I need to take a nap.”

“Please don’t do it behind the wheel, with or without me in the car.” He hummed, and she wondered if he even heard her. 

* * *

He continued to act strangely, and Marinette wondered if she needed to momentarily stop her sweet progress and go play babysitter in his office. He looked on the verge of tears all morning. But she had better things to do than make sure he didn’t make an idiot of himself.

“I need you to help run something by someone.” He yawned in her doorway, and she jumped up to follow him out. 

He stood a little too close to the door, And Marinette was worried he was going to fall over. 

As soon as the doors opened he went to walk through them, but Mairnette had to grab him and yank him away from being run over by a girl in a wheelchair.

“Sorry Melanie.” Tim mumbled as Marinette pushed him forwards after the woman had safely exited the elevator. 

“There. We’re even.” Marinette joked as the doors closed. 

“Huh.” He slowly nodded. “I guess we are.”

* * *

She had made it through two whole flash drives by the end of the day. Chloé had stayed the night last night, transformed in her living room, and left nearly twenty of them with her. She had stuffed three in her baton, stuck six in one of her pockets, and seven in the other one. Sixteen total flash drives. Full of random things Chloé had hurriedly copied down and made disappear. 

The first had had good stuff on it. Vague references to embezzling as well as other good old fashion stealing on it, but the second was mostly just boring. Maybe there was code she needed to crack… 

* * *

“Hey.” Tim frowned at Marinette from her doorway. Her lights were off, but her screen was bright against her face. 

“Hey.” She mumbled back. 

“Are you going home?”

“No, why?” 

“Why aren’t you going home?”

“Because I’m making so much progress right now.” She took out one drive and put in another one.

“Yeah, well, you need to go home some time.”

“Oh that's rich coming from you.” She grumbled. He just sighed. She had a point.

“How many of those have you… wait, what are you even doing?”

“Going through stolen files.”

“Marinette!”

“What? They were acquired by my partner, I work with her and she works for him, so technically, even though it's stolen it's not illegal.” She argued as she started to scroll.  _ Damn this woman, sneaky as she is attractive _ .

“Ok, as… funny as that is, I can’t just leave you here by yourself. Literally everyone else has gone home. It’s nearly midnight.” Ok, so it was just after eleven, not midnight, but still. 

“You think sitting here trying to see if normal correspondence is secretly a code or something is funny?”  _ No, I think it’s hot as fuck, but I’m not about to tell you that, _

“No, I think you being devious as hell is funny. What’s not funny is you running on fumes. You need to go home and sleep.”

“Running on fumes? Get me a sandwich or something then. Maybe Taco Bell. I could use some Taco Bell right now.” He considered his options here. 

“Tomorrow.” He said. 

“What?” She finally looked up at him. 

“If you still want to stay late and overwork yourself tomorrow, I’ll let you, but you need to go home first.” She sat back in her chair, and tapped her hand on her desk a few times. 

“Deal.” She stood up, and immediately had to sit back down. “Oh fuck. Headache.”

“See?” Marinette glared at Tim as she slowly stood up, determined not to fall down this time. 

“Fuck you.”

* * *

Tim had a nearby apartment that he went to when living with the others didn’t really go that well. He had a backup of his costume, and everything he would need for a patrol. 

As he looked out the window, and saw a Chaton wandering around, as if looking for something, he got unbelievably pissed.

“Whatever you’re about to do, don’t.” He jumped at the voice behind him. He turned around to throw a knife at them, and found no one there. “Really?” A woman in bright blue said next to him. “A knife?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Bunnyx.” She held a hand out to him. He didn’t take it.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re thinking about confronting someone, aren’t you?” He hesitated. 

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” The woman sighed, “I have the power of time travel. I’m part of Ladybug’s team. But I don’t always fight alongside her. I manage the timeline, make sure nothing goes extremely awry.” He gave her a wary look. He had heard bad things about her timeline skills. “And whatever you’re about to do does some serious damage. So please don’t.”

“What… what happened?”

“You accidentally gave away a pretty big secret, and it made Ladybug and Chaton extremely mad at each other. You need to wait for them to figure things out themselves.”

“Figure what out?” Bunnyx gave him a funny look. 

“You don’t know yet?”

“Know what?”

“Kid… I can’t tell you a lot, but whatever Marinette told you that day in the car, you need to forget it. You need to get to know Ladybug for yourself without judging her based on something Marinette told you. I erased that whole timeline for a reason. Don’t think about it too hard.” She opened her umbrella, and disappeared. He sighed, and set down his gear. 

Maybe he should have stayed at the office after all. 

* * *

  
  
  


“I thought you wouldn’t have taken me seriously.” Tim frowned late the following day as he saw her, again, late at night messing with flash drives. 

“A deal is a deal. Now get me Taco Bell.” She mumbled as she printed out a copy of whatever she was looking at. 

“I don’t remember Taco Bell being part of the agreement.” He pulled out his phone to order it anyway, “And I made the damn agreement in the first place to discourage you from staying late at all. I thought it would make you realize staying late is dumb.”

“You just called yourself dumb.” She pointed out as she grabbed a highlighter. “Now sit down, you might be of use here. Do you ever like to play detective?” _ Do I ever. _

“I mean, I guess.”

“Good.” She finally looked away from her computer, and handed him a large stack of papers. “Also, I'm nearly out of printer paper, I need hard copies for evidence. Grab me some when you get the Taco Bell you’re pretending you didn’t just order?” He tried not to blush.

“Fine. What’s this?”

“This,” She took the paper off the top, and scooted the rest to the side, “I’m pretty sure, is a code. See?” She pointed to the highlighted spots. “Here, they’re talking about a lunch date. Now, my english may not be phenomenal-”

“Says the girl who just used the word ‘phenomenal’-”

“But the timing appears to be all off, the words seem to be phrased strangely, and I just.. I get the feeling that the lunch date is not exactly a lunch date. Like, it’s not lunch. Or a date.”

“Huh.” He read a few of them over. “You’re right, it does seem a little… weird.” He read one where a strangely large amount of ‘guests’ would be in attendance, something about plates of food that didn’t add up, and something about times of arrival that was… odd.

“Yeah. It took me a second to figure out what was up. But I think it might be…” She went back to her computer as she launched into an explanation about how the guest list could be people in on the crime, the number of plates could be the price of the item, “In hundreds of millions, of course,” And then the time of arrival could be the date of the heist. At first, he had thought Lex just liked military time. “But, it’s not the exact date. I noted it’s all exactly one week in advance. I noticed this when I went to look for the diner it was talking about to see if the owners knew anything about it, and then realised the place he was saying was a diner was actually a jewelry store. So then I had case files from break ins at that location around the times these emails are dated, and finally found one with matching numbers.” 

He couldn’t help but stare at her as she rambled on about the lunch puzzle. He was fascinated by it, but he was fascinated with her brain even more. 

“So I had even more case files sent over, nearly every robbery Sabrina could get her hands on, and sent them all through a pattern recognizer Max programmed a while ago, put in the information, and-”

“Max? Who’s Max?” He didn’t mean to interrupt, but he was glad he did when she grinned at him. 

“Oh, you would love Max, he’s a French intelligence agent, and he used to design all of the new gear they have. He graduated MIT early with just as many doctorates as me, but he’s all about engineering. He built his own hovering AI Robot when we were in what you would call highschool.” She nearly bounced with excitement.

“Is that where you got your FBI connection?” She had a glint in her eye that said he was close.

“He got a temporary liaison officer contract. He’s here for a while.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and then went back to her calculator thing on her screen. She plugged in more emails, and when a new connection popped up on her calculator thing, she printed out more emails, made highlighted copies, put notes on them, and threw them onto the stack. 

“You are a true genius, Marinette.” He regretted not letting her stay the night before. She may have cracked this sooner. 

“Yeah, I know. I have to be.” She retorted playfully, but he hesitated at her words. He didn’t have much time to react as his phone went off.

“Taco Bell?” She perked up at the buzz.

“Yeah.” He got up to go get it.

“Don’t forget those papers!” She yelled behind him. 

“Yeah, I got it.” They worked on the top floor, the thirtieth. When he got to the fifteenth, halfway, his phone started to ring. 

“Dude.” It was Kon. 

“What?”

“I used my hearing to try and figure out where you were. Why do you sound like you’re having a panic attack?” He sighed. Fuck superboy.

“I’m not having a panic attack, I’m falling in love miserably.” He heard a burst of laughter on the other end.

“Yeah, same thing.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“So, who is she?” He sighed agitatedly.

“You’re into breaking personal boundaries, you figure it out.” He hung up.

* * *

“TACO BELL!” Marinette pumped her hands into the air, and nearly tacked him to get to her food.

“What would your friends say to this behavior?” He sighed. 

“They would say I need to get coffee.”

“No one is open this late at night.” He pointed to the clock on the wall. It was nearly one am.

“Taco Bell was.” She argued. “Plus, isn’t there that little table out in the hall or something?” He shook his head. 

“Night crew cleans it.”

“Damn.” She mumbled, and went back to her desktop. “Hey, can you go get the front door?”

“What?” He snapped his head up from where he had been making notes from matched cases and emails.

“I postmate-ed coffee.” She gave him a guilty smile, and he groaned. 

“Marinette, what the hell?”

“Hey!” She defended herself, “I’m trying to take down a criminal mastermind here! That requires coffee!”  _ Oh trust me, I know. _

“Fine.”

* * *

She called it quits around four. It wasn’t the pounding headache that made her stop, or the glare of the computer screen, nor was it the time, but the fact that the printer ran out of ink and the supply closet was locked for the night. She swore loudly, kicked the table the printer was sitting on behind her, and Tim just cringed. He felt bad for the poor table. She had been on such a good streak, too.

“It will still be here in the morning.” He reminded her, and she growled. 

“Yeah, but my head won’t be.”

“Sorry.” Was all he could come up with. 

Outside, he headed to his car. She didn’t follow him. 

“Mari?” He looked around for her. 

“What?” She peered back around from the other side of the building. 

“Come on, I’m taking you home.” He gestured. 

“No, it fine, I don’t really live that far-”

“Get in the fucking car.” He deadpanned. She hesitated. “I don’t give a flying fuck where you’re from or how far away you live. Get in the damn car.” She huffed before marching back over and climbing into the passenger seat.

“Really?  _ Mari? _ ” She questioned him five minutes later. 

“Yeah. Mari. As in MARInette.”

“You can do better than that.” She rolled her eyes. “At least  _ pretend  _ to put in an effort for me.”

* * *

“You’re late, Cheng.” Someone yelled at her as she headed towards the elevator at eleven am the next morning. She didn’t bother to look their way before giving them the middle finger. 

She lasted a total of five hours. 

* * *

“Hey, Mariette, I wanted to see how you were-” Tim stopped short as he realised the lights were off again. She usually kept the lights off when she was trying to think. But when she was thinking, she was usually laying on her back with her hands at her side or on her face. Currently, he noticed she was curled up in a ball under her desk. 

She made a small noise in recognition of his presence. But he figured she was actually asleep. 

“Goodnight, Marinette.” He raised his voice slightly, and she jumped, banging her head on her desk. He cringed for her pain. 

“Awe fuck.” She rubbed her head, or at least, her shadow under her desk behind the opaque glass seemed to be rubbing her head. “I’m up, I’m up.” She crawled into sight, and he tried not to laugh at her. 

“Go home, Marinette.” He shook his head, and she scowled at him. 

“I don’t think I could walk to the door if I wanted to.” He looked at the clock. It was four. She had been here twelve hours ago.

“Well then, have someone get you a cab.” 

“Noooo.” She mumbled, and he flicked her lights on. “Ah, ok, fine, I’ll go home.” She blinked, and made a sour face at the light. He turned it back off again. 

“Thanks.”

* * *

He honestly didn’t expect to see her so soon after she left, and definitely not at eleven at night. And in a fight.

“What’s going on here?” Red Robin jumped down to Marinette and some blond kid glaring daggers at each other. 

“She’s being an asshole.” The blond accused her. _ Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no no. _

“Watch it Adrien, I’ll beat your ass right here right now, you haven’t given me a reason not to.” She seethed.

“Hey, uh, Marinette, right? Maybe you can give me more details about why I shouldn’t report both of your asses.” He had to pretend not to be committing favoritism if she didn’t know Red Robin all that well.

“He’s stalking me Red, that’s what’s going on here.” She growled, not looking away from the guy she was in a staring contest with.  _ Dammit, not the time to blush over a cute nickname. _

_ ‘Red Robin, what’s going on? _ ’ Oracle asked. It wasn’t the time for that, either. 

“Stalking? You know, blondie, we take these kinds of things very seriously here.” He tried not to beat the guy up right there. He technically couldn’t arrest him for anything, though, There was no proof.

“I’m not stalking, just trying to prove a point to you.”

“Sounds like stalking to me.” They spoke at the same time. Red Robin hesitated. 

“Listen up, Agreste.” Marinette growled.  _ Ah, Agreste. That makes so much sense. _ “You’re going to leave me the hell alone, you’re going to stop harassing my sister and my friends, we don’t owe you anything, and you need to back the fuck up before-”

“Before you get smacked the fuck up.” Red Robin finished the quote. She smirked, still not looking at him, though. 

_ ‘Red? Hello?’ _ Oracle asked again. ‘ _ You there, bro?’ _

“You can’t do that.” Agreste sneered. 

“You know what? Watch me.” Red Robin cringed, wondering if he should stop her or not, before she landed a fist square in his face. Adrien stared at her in shock for only a second before retaliating. 

“You know what Oracle, I’m breaking up a fight. That’s what I’m doing. Are you happy now?” He grumbled as he tried to pull Marinette back and bop Agreste on the nose with the side of his fist at the same time. The blond was lucky he didn’t use the sharp pointy part. He started to whine about something, and Mairnette screamed at him to grow the hell up.

‘ _ Seriously? _ ’ Oracle deadpanned on the other end.

‘ _ He didn’t answer because it’s his girlfriend punching someone. The sword one _ .’ Robin taunted. Tim figured he was on a nearby rooftop somewhere.

“Shut the fuck up.” He spoke to all four of them, Robin, Oracle, Marinette, and Blondie. They all four stopped. 

“Make him go away.” Marinette grumbled at him. He wanted to say, ‘Anything for you’ and knock the guy off of a pier, but he couldn’t do that. Grayson would be upset.

“I’ll try.” He called it in, and a cop was just around the corner, coincidentally. They took statements, Red Robin not leaving in case they (Marinette) decided to go for a round two, and they eventually came to the conclusion that Adrien was in the wrong. They made him go back to the station for more paperwork, but Marinette was free to go. 

“You look pretty bad, you want me to take you home?”

“No way in hell am I giving my address to a random stranger.” She teased him, completely unserious, but he nodded.

“Really? You know I could just take you back to that building I saw you climbing last week-”

“I don’t want to go home.” She blurted out. He tilted his head at her. “I think… I think I should go somewhere else. Until I know he’s really gone.”

“Ok, do you… do you have any friends?” He wondered what to say to this. He knew she didn’t really have anyone, she just got here.

“Uh… I have one friend. Really only one. I would hate to bother Tim, but I think he’s the only option I really have.”  _ No, I don’t mind, come over as often as you want _ .

“Does this Tim have an address? I can get through this city pretty fast with the-”

“Grappling hook? He lives in a damn forest, I don’t know how well you can use grappling hooks on trees.” They started to walk down the sidewalk. 

“Really? A forest? In Gotham?”

“Yeah, I was pretty confused too.” She laughed. “But it’s actually a pretty cool place. I think it could really help with the whole smog thing.”

“The whole smog thing?” He shut his comms off as they walked towards the outskirts of the city. 

“Yeah. Have you noticed it? The constant clouds all over this place, like it's cursed or something.”

“Probably cursed.” He agreed. They had a long way to go. “So, did your friend message you back yet?” Her face darkened. 

“No. I probably shouldn't be doing this, he’s probably busy, and I don’t really-” he tried to discreetly message Oracle as she ranted. 

* * *

  
  


“Awe, shit.” Oracle ran over to a table, found Tim’s phone, and opened it. She opened Marinette’s message, and tried to give her best Tim impression as she sent something back about her being able to come over for an emergency, but Babs was going to be answering the door since he was out getting some groceries. She would have to warn Tim about getting groceries before he came back in for the night. 

* * *

  
  


“Oh! He said it was ok.” Marinette smiled as Red Robin walked up towards the driveway. Alfred was on his way down to come pick her up so she wouldn’t have to walk the whole distance. 

“You sure you were supposed to walk all the way here with me?” She questioned him.

“I would have felt bad if I didn’t.” He shrugged. 

“Whatever.” She smirked, and got in. 

“Boy troubles, Miss Cheng?” Alfred asked her.

“Was it that obvious?” Marinette sighed. “My crazy ex’s terrorist father just got put in jail, I’m the one who put him there in the first place, now he’s acting like I owe it to him to be nice to him and now he’s stalked me halfway across the world to demand an apology out of me. Who the hell does that?”

“How terribly awful of him.” Alfred shook his head. 

“Thanks, Alfred.” She sighed. 

Marinette headed inside, and didn’t know what to do about… anything. 

She made her way to the living room, vaguely remembering where it was, and Alfred brought her hot chocolate. She gave a tired smile. 

* * *

“Hey, sorry I wasn’t home.” Tim found her on the couch twenty minutes after he had dropped her off with Alfred. She had an empty cup in her hands.

“Nah, it’s fine.” She yawned. “It’s a long story, I really didn’t want to go home.”

“That happens sometimes.” He sat down next to her, and she immediately set her cup down, and curled into his side. He was pleasantly surprised by this. She was warm, and despite being in a fight and extremely sleep-deprived, she smelled nice. 

“Thanks for not being an ass.” She mumbled. He wondered what he did to deserve such high praise.

“Oh, I am one hundred percent an ass, I’m just not being one today.” She giggled. “Do you have no memory of me swearing at you to get into the car? Pretty assholish of me to do that.”

“Yeah, but I have a big ego and sometimes I need you to tell me I’m an idiot and to  _ ‘just get in the fucking car’ _ sometimes.” She did her best Tim impression, and he laughed.

“So, you want to tell me what happened?” She frowned, and moved her face into his shoulder. 

“Remember how I broke my phone?” He frowned. Yeah, he remembered. 

“Crazy ex, you said? Or was it clingy?” It was clingy. He knew that.

“I put his father in prison, after he was taken down by Ladybug.” Suddenly, it clicked for him. He knew all about his father being the terrorist, and he knew she had taken one down, but it didn’t really hit him until this moment that she had actually been the one to put away the man who had done the unspeakable horrors to her. That sent chills up his spine. He just pulled her a little closer. 

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t really know what exactly it was he was sorry for. 

“He came all the way here to try and make me say sorry to him. He acted like I owed it to him or something.”

“What an asshole.”

“Yeah.” She mumbled, and quickly fell asleep soon after. He just sat there, enjoying her warmth, and being grateful she was alive. 

* * *

She woke up to feel something wrapped around her. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw one Tim Drake leaning on the arm of the couch. She was leaning on him. 

Bad Marinette, you’re not supposed to fall asleep on couches with clients. Clients who might as well be your boss. 

“Oh.  _ You’re _ here.” She flinched, and saw Damian holding his sword in the entryway behind them. 

“Yeah.  _ I’m  _ here.” She mumbled, and tried to sit up. It didn’t work, Tim seemed to have a death grip on her ribcage.

“Why?” He didn’t sound rude, just confused.

“A bad guy tried to hurt me last night, and I knew him personally so I didn’t feel comfortable going home.” She didn’t see any purpose in lying to the small kid. Small… teen, actually. 

“Huh.” He made a strange face, and left. She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at the back of his head. 

“Hey.” Tim mumbled.

“Oh good, you’re up.” She tried to wiggle away from him again, but this time, he just pulled her closer. “Tim…” She whined. 

“What?” He tried to sound innocent as he leaned farther back, pulling her with him. 

“I have to pee.” She lied. 

“Bullshit.” He called.

“Do you really want to find out?” He sighed, 

“Fine.” He let her go, and she crawled to a standing position. She did, however, go to the bathroom. 

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NO EDITING WE DIE LIKE MEN

She stopped at home before going into work, late for the second day in a row. But that was ok, Tim knew she was making insane progress thanks to the pattern recognizing calculator. 

“You alive?” Tim asked her as she rubbed her eyes.

“Barely.” She responded. “But now my problem is that I’m gonna be more awake later, and mess my sleep schedule all up.”

“Tragic.” Tim nodded, and she went back to work. 

She ended up staying late.

Again.

And full of coffee.

Again. 

* * *

“Tim help.” She crashed into his chair as he walked back in from a meeting he had been in. 

“Help? Help you how?”

“I don’t know.” She grumbled, and spun around in his chair. “I feel like shit, I look like shit, my minds gone to shit, everything is shit.”

“Your mind is perfectly fine, Marinette,” He practically teased her, “You just need to take a break.”

“But I’m making progress!” She pointed out.

“Yeah. You are. And yet you’re sitting in my chair and complaining about everything being shit.” He also pointed out. She sighed, and looked out the huge window behind his desk. The sun had gone down, and the city… was beautiful. It was completely different from Paris, but it was still beautiful nonetheless. 

“Fine. Take my damn chair then I guess.” He grumbled, and dragged a different chair around to his side of the desk. She peered out towards the city thoughtfully for nearly half an hour, before she broke the silence, 

* * *

“Why do you think they do it?” She asked him. 

“Why does who do what?” Tim mumbled. She pointed out the window behind him, where Robin was punching the shit out of some guy. 

“Him. Them. Or rather, all of them, I guess. Why do you think they do it?” He hesitated. No one had really asked  _ him  _ that before. 

“I don’t know.” He lied. Well, not really, he had no idea why some of them  _ stayed  _ doing it. But he knew why they started. 

“I mean, I told you about the magic jewelry in Paris, but those guys are just… regular people. They have no magical energy sources to pull from, no superpowers, yet they do everything someone like Ladybug or Chaton could do. I can’t help but wonder why.” Some days he questioned himself, too. “Like,  _ I  _ did it because it was necessary at the time, but then-”

“You what?” He snapped up to look at her. She gave him a guilty smile.

“Can you keep a secret?” Yeah. He was pretty good at keeping secrets.

“Yeah, but what the hell do you mean you were a-”

“It was a one-time thing. Ladybug was alone, and a villain had taken out Chaton Noir. She couldn’t fight on her own, and she gave me one of the magic jewelry pieces.” He stared at her. He didn’t know if this revelation was a good thing or a bad one. “It wasn’t one of the ones I showed you the other day, it was a different power. It was the mouse one, and I had a magic jump-rope, and my power was being able to replicate myself. It was pretty cool.”

“You can’t be serious.” This tiny woman had been a super hero? He had a hard time believing that.

“Yeah! I was called Multimouse, it was pretty fun. But it was only a one-time thing, and I didn’t really want to do that whole ‘ _ secret identity _ ’ thing, especially when my sister and I do practically everything together.” She shrugged. This was… a lot to process. She had been granted the magic ability to split herself in two, she had an indestructible magic jump rope, and she had been a hero. Tiny little Cheng had been a hero. But then again, she was… pretty scary.

“How long ago was this?”

“I was fourteen, so… just over ten years ago?” She shrugged. 

“ _ YOU WERE FOURTEEN?! _ ” He didn’t mean to yell, it just kinda… happened. 

“Yeah! I had super cute little space buns, a bright pink headband, and everything. It was really adorable!” Ok, now he was definitely murdering Ladybug. She shouldn’t have brought kids into this, even if she had been a kid herself. She should have fucking known better. 

_ Damian is sixteen, he’s been at this longer than Ladybug has _ A voice in his head reminded him. He wanted to take that voice and punch it in the face. Not. A good enough. Excuse.

“Why do you look pissed? Do you have something against super heroes?” _ Yes, yes I do. _

“No, I just… A kid shouldn’t have been brought into that fight.” He missed the smirk she threw out the window.

“Hey. I will have you know I was _ badass  _ with that jump rope.” She gave him a sly look, but it did little to lighten his mood. Ok, maybe it did  _ something _ . He just didn’t want to admit it. 

“You know, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t have told me that.”

“Oh please, I’ve never told anyone that before. I also never told anyone about that wrong timeline thing either. You’re just… really easy to tell things to.” She said it like it was no big deal, but he could see the strange horrors behind her eyes. He didn’t question them. 

“Easy to tell things to?”

“Yeah. I’ve only known you for a month, and yet I’ve told you _ two  _ things on one else in my life knows about. I guess… I guess I just needed to tell them to someone I knew enough to trust and yet not enough that I was worried it would change the dynamic we’ve got going on here.” He paused. 

“Huh.” He thought about what she had said. She trusted him, and wasn’t worried what a secret might do to their friendship. Interesting. 

“Yeah. Huh.”

* * *

  
  


“Bug, we got a problem.” Alya called her late that night. She was already in bed and very not in the mood.

“What is it?”

“I got a Ladyblog submission.” She shot upwards.

“You got a what?” The Ladyblog hadn’t been very active since they had all moved. 

“Someone spotted you in Gotham. You need to do something about that.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. I’m on it.” She hung up on her, and called Max.

“We’ve got an emergency.”

“What the hell?” He was clearly also prepared for sleep. 

“Ladybug needs to make more appearances in Paris. Someone’s seen her in Gotham. We need to make them think she’s gone back to Paris, and staying there for good. Then I need to switch miraculouses.” She grumbled. 

“Can we put this into action tomorrow?” She sighed. 

“Yeah, I guess we can wait.”

“Oh thank fuck.” He went back to sleep before hanging up. Funny. 

* * *

The next night, she used both the fox (curtesy of Alya) and the ladybug as she went out for a patrol. 

“Hey. We need to talk.” She caught up to Red Robin and Red Hood. Red Robin looked irritated with her. She wished he would make up her mind if he liked her or not. Or if he was even a nice person or not.

None of the civilians could see who she was, just them. That was what the fox was for. 

“Talk about what?”

“I’ve got an… identity problem. I never should have come here as Ladybug, I should have been someone else from the beginning, and now I need to make it look like Ladybug still lives in Paris, and being spotted here was only a one-time thing.”

“And just  _ why _ do we need to talk about this?” Red Robin sighed exasperatedly. Even with his whole face being covered, she could tell Red Hood was confused by this behavior.  _ You and me both, buddy _ .

“Because I’m changing the miraculous. My power source. I’m going to be using a different set of abilities, changing my look and my name. But I wanted to let you know I wasn’t completely dipping on this whole thing, and that it was still going to be me, the same me under the mask, that was running around here.”

“Much appreciated, despite what this asshole thinks.” Red Hood nodded at her. Red Robin just scowled, and pretended not to care. 

“So, who are you going to be?” Hood at least  _ tried _ to be friendly. 

“Don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

“Great, you ran all the way here for nothing.” Robin’s anger was lessened, but not dissipated. 

“Well, maybe if this becomes a regular occurance, we could come up with, like, I don’t know, a code or something. A password of sorts. To let us know it’s you.” Hood ignored Robin’s rude remarks. 

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” She hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe… maybe our code could be ‘Red Robin is an asshole’.”

“No, that’s too common a phrase.” Hood pretended to rub his chin in thoughtfulness. She giggled. Red Robin just glared back and forth between them. “Maybe… what’s your phone password?”

“Ooh, 1738.” 

“Ok. That’s good. The password can be 1738.”

“Fairly odd to have a spoken password be numbers, but whatever.” Red Robin put in. 

“He’s right.” She agreed.

“Well, that’s the more reason no one would guess the password.” Hood shrugged. Red Robin visibly rolled his eyes, even if you couldn’t see them. His body just…  _ moved  _ like an eye roll.

“How about we have letters and numbers. The password can be… 1738 lotion.”

“Lotion?”

“Yeah, lotion. It’s a random word. Spoken frequently, but not frequent enough to be preceded by the number 1738.”

“True.” Red Hood agreed positively. At least one of them liked her. 

“Ok, deal. Everytime I change my powers and outfit, the password is 1738 lotion.” She kept a completely serious face despite the ridiculously silly conversation they were having. 

“I’ll discreetly spread the word.” He nodded to her, and she waved goodbye as he and Red Robin took off.

* * *

“Why are you in such a fowl mood?” Hood practically threw him up against a wall as soon as they were sure she was gone. 

“I have my reasons.” He snapped. 

“Yeah? What fucking reasons would they be?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? You think it doesn’t matter? If you have information that could possibly be detrimental to a mission, you need to spill it.” Red Robin hesitated. He thought about what Bunnyx had told him that day in his apartment. 

“No. I don’t.” He confessed. “It’s nothing more than a personal opinion.”

“This has to do with that lawyer, doesn’t it?” Hood took a step closer to him. 

“I don’t have the right to tell you what Marinette’s been through.” He snarled, and then realised that he had just agreed. Hood let him go.

“Huh. You’re holding a grudge against Ladybug because of something that had to do with her and Marinette. Real professional, Replacement.” Hood left him behind as he ran off somewhere. 

* * *

Ladybug and Pegasus came up with a plan. She would go out in Paris every other night for a week, letting herself get spotted in several places as Ladybug, basically make sure the people knew she was still around, keep the crime down, and show up in Gotham the same night as a new hero. At the same time. So people knew they were two different citizens, and no Parisian in Gotham was Ladybug. 

Simple as that. 

It came time to pick a new Miraculous, and she was feeling… nostalgic. She thought about what she had said to Tim the other day. About being Multi-Mouse. 

She figured a good old name change and some minor suit changes should be enough to throw her new friend for a loop. Make him think Ladybug had picked a different person to start wearing ‘her’ Miraculous. As long as he didn’t know about Ladybug’s plan to fake out leaving and come back as someone new, he would never know.

If only she knew who Red Robin was. Then she wouldn't have made that mistake. 

* * *

“1738 Lotion.” She giggled at them.

Red Robin stared at the new hero. He had a weird sense of Déja Vu, but he blamed it on knowing that it was supposed to be the same civilian under the mask. 

“Hi!” She waved. She was wearing a light gray suit with dark gray boots and dark gray gloves. The gloves and boots were outlined with pale pink strips. She had come up with a mask that matched their style, the domino mask, but the mask itself was gray and the eye part was pink. She had a pink headband and bright blue space buns. She was holding a glowing hot pink jump rope in her hands. 

If he hadn’t seen Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, he would have been freaked out by the glowing rope. 

“Marinagerie.” She stuck out a hand. Black Bat shook it. 

“Marinagerie?” He had raised an eyebrow at her, but of course she couldn’t see it. 

“Yeah! The power of the mouse is being able to split yourself into multiple different people, and menagerie means  _ many and diverse _ so it’s the word menagerie with a twist.” She practically bounced with energy. He wanted to be cold with her, especially now that she reminded him so much of Marinette, but Bunnyx’s words echoed in his ears:  _ Whatever Marinette told you that day in the car, you need to forget it. You need to get to know Ladybug for yourself without judging her based on something Marinette told you. _ He sighed, and also shook her hand.

“Progress.” She pointed finger guns at him, and he regretted it. Was it too late to un-self-reflect and still be an ass?

“Come. We patrol.” Black Bat smiled at the girl, who willingly followed. He rarely ever saw Cass smile at anyone. That irritated him even more. 

She threw her jump rope at a nearby gargoyle, and he knew for a fact it wouldn’t be able to support her weight. He smirked as he started to point this out to her, but as she jumped, she sailed perfectly through the air. His words got stuck in his throat. 

“You coming?” Marinagerie yelled back to him. He scowled as he followed her. He hated magic users.

* * *

He couldn’t help but have his mind be consumed by her as he fidgeted around the batcave after they patrolled that night. There was something so…  _ familiar _ about her. Something that had nothing to do with Ladybug. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. 

He thought about what Marinette had told him about when she had been Multi-

Wait a minute. 

Marinette. 

That was what seemed so familiar about her. Pink headband, two little space buns.

But he had seen how the suits changed drastically when they were given to different people, and this outfit was almost exactly the same.

He blinked in surprise. 

Marinagerie. MARINagerie. MARINette. 

“Red? You ok?” Damian waved a hand in front of his face. 

“Oh I’m fucking fabulous.” He mumbled, still not moving.

Marinette was Marinagerie. Marinagerie was Ladybug. Marinette was Ladybug. Marinette didn’t hold a grudge against Ladybug because Ladybug hadn’t saved her in the apocalypse because SHE WAS Ladybug. She wouldn’t hold a grudge against HERSELF.

That meant Chaton was… 

“Awe fuck.” He collapsed onto the floor of the batcave, and received weird looks from his entire family. Even Cass was confused. “I owe her, like, _ so much  _ coffee for that.” He spoke without thinking. 

“ _ My… my sister became one _ .” She had said that day in his car.

“ _ She almost killed me. _ ” 

Chloé was Chaton. 

“ _ She was the only person in the whole world I thought wouldn’t do that to me, and she seriously almost killed me _ .” 

Chloé had been Chaton Blanc because she Chaton Noir. 

“ _ There is no record of it because Ladybug and… Chaton created a whole new timeline where that didn’t happen instead _ .”

No they hadn’t. Ladybug and  _ Bunnyx _ created a new timeline, and she wasn’t supposed to know about Bunnyx if she was really a civilian. Which she wasn’t. And she had hesitated when saying Chaton Noir was there. She hadn’t been counting on him dreaming about it. 

“ _ They had to, she destroyed over half of the earth trying to get to what she wanted. I… I wasn’t supposed to remember. But I do. _ ” 

She wasn’t supposed to remember because the civilians had their memories wiped. But if Marinette, who was Ladybug, had done the memory wiping, of course she would remember it. 

Marinette had had to fight her own sister, and it had caused a world-ending apocalypse. And she had to live with that knowledge.

“I am the worst friend in the whole world.” He threw his cowl into the wall, cracking it, and stormed upstairs. Still in his uniform.

“Hey, get back here and-” He gave Bruce the finger, and marched all the way to his bedroom. 

He threw himself onto the floor, again, and thought about Bunnyx. He thought about what she had said. His botched confrontation attempt. 

He had wanted to yell at Chaton Noir for causing an apocalypse in the first place, and leaving his friend scarred because of a failed memory wipe attempt. He wanted to tell her she was forever traumatized by this mistake, and she needed to pay for it. 

But Bunnyx had mentioned that the confrontation led to Chaton Noir and Ladybug fighting each other. Something about letting them come to terms with it on their own. 

But why would…

She didn’t know. Marinette had said the Akuma victims didn’t know what had happened to them after they came back. And if they managed to get rid of a lot more than that…

Chaton Noir didn’t even know what she had done. She had no knowledge of ever hurting Marinette in any way. 

And he was being an asshole to Ladybug for something she had to struggle with on her own. That made him feel even worse. 

“Hey.” Dick knocked on the slightly open door. “What’s up?”

“Fuck off.” He responded into his knees.

“In the nicest way possible, no.”

“I’m clearly moping here.” He picked his head up slightly to make his anger a little more noticeable.

“Tell me what happened.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you what I did wrong without hurting someone else in the process.”

“Yeah, well, forgive me if I value you over somebody else.” Dick tred not to sound sarcastic.

“Yeah, well, I don’t.” He growled, and Dick was slightly caught off guard by this. 

“You… don’t?”

“I don’t.” He repeated. “I don’t value myself over this other person because of what I’ve done to them and how terrible I feel about it.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been a really bad friend.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well, apologize, then. I’m sure it will help at least a tiny bit.”

“I can’t.” Tim sighed dramatically. “And if you’re coming in, have the decency to close my door.” He snapped, giving Dick the o-k to come in. He shut the door, and sat down on the edge of Tims bed.

“Why wouldn’t apologizing help?”

“Because… because she doesn’t know I’m a friend. I can’t apologize without being suspicious.”

“What the hell kind of a night have you had?”

“You don’t even want to know.” 

* * *

Marinette was exhausted. She had gone to Paris almost immediately after patrolling in Gotham. But that didn’t change her self pride in her little devious plan in any manner. She sleepily smirked into her freezing cold coffee the next morning. 

“Morning, Tim.” She tried not to lean on him as they headed out the door. It was the first time she acknowledged him all morning. He somehow seemed to be avoiding her. It clearly wasn’t working since he was still giving her a ride. 

“Good morning, Marinette.” He sighed. She wondered what had warranted the annoyed tone. Maybe he thought she was ignoring him? She would have to work on that.

* * *

“I went to this place for a sandwich for lunch, and they had these funny looking cookies and I figured you wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t bring any back, so here.” Marinette handed him a plate of pink cookies with rainbow chocolate chips in them. He hesitantly took one, and bit into it. His eyes lit up.

“You have to tell me where you got these.” He tried not to talk with his mouth full of cookie. She smiled triumphantly, and marched out.

“That’s a secret. But maybe I can take you there sometime myself.” She said from the doorway. Oh yeah. He definitely liked her. This was a serious problem. 

* * *

“I’ll get a venti mocha frappuccino, two cakepops, and uh…” Marinette looked up at him. “Do you want anything?” Tim was taken aback by this. She never asked him if he wanted anything before. 

“Uh, I guess I’ll have a cookie.” He shrugged, and she pulled out her wallet. Oh, there was no way in hell he was letting her pay.

“And your total is-” Neither of them paid much attention to her as they both rushed to pay first. She jammed her card into the chip reader the same time he put his against the screen. Marinette glared at him as the screen lit up with ‘approved!’

“Who’s went through?” They demanded at the same time. The poor barista looked horrified to see two of the most recognizable faces in Gotham giving her piercing glares. 

“Uh…” She looked at the screen. “Yours, Ma’am.” She gave a small cheer, and did a little victory dance. He tried not to swear too loudly, there were kids around. 

“Tomorrow.” He warned her. “Tomorrow, I’m paying.” She stopped her little victory shimmy, and grinned up at him as she cupped his face in her hands.

“Not a chance in hell.” She spoke softly, and smiled like she was about to kill. 

“Oh, we’ll see about that.” He playfully batted her hands away, and they moved away for the next person to place their order. 

* * *

“And just where do you think you’re going?” Tim managed to get ahead of her as she started to walk down the street.

“To get lunch.” She shrugged, trying to get out around him. 

“Oh really?” He made a face at her that reminded her of all the times Chaton had flirted with Little Bee before finding out she was Sabrina. When she had been flirting with her. 

“Yeah really.” She faked him out, and dodged past him. 

“Lunch is the other way, don’t you remember?”

“How do you know where my favorite place to get lunch is?” She fell for it.

“I don’t.” He grinned, and caught up with her. 

“Ugh, you are the worst.” She gave up, and let him follow her to her favorite panini place. 

“And yet you let me stay.”

“Let you? I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried.” She hip checked him, and he feigned offense. The offense was quickly replaced with a smirk.

“So you admit to not trying to get rid of me? You want me around?” 

“Oh shut the fuck up. You’re just trying to keep me away from our morning spot, and you know it.” She rolled her eyes as she opened the door.

“Ah, so you admit to trying to play unfair?”

“I swear to all that is holy, I will…” She trailed off as she shook her head. 

“You’ll what?” He played innocent. She elbowed him in the ribs as she walked up to the counter to place her order. 

“You’re usual, ma’am?” The lady behind the counter had a look in her eyes that Marinette didn’t like. She didn’t like it at all. 

“Actually, I think I’ll do a steak and cheese today instead.” She tried. “No red onion.”

“Alright then, we’ll get right started on that.” She nodded and walked away.

“Wait, what about…”

“It’s already taken care of, Ma’am.” The lady smiled at her. 

“You.” She turned to glare at Tim. She had a hard time hiding her smile. He gave her a devious look that made her crazy. The fun kind of crazy, not the Harley kind of crazy.

“What? She didn’t say that _ I  _ was the one who did it.” He shrugged.

“Who else would it have been?” She threw her hands in the air, her wallet back in her bag. 

“Santa Clause?” He tried. 

“Oh very funny.” She grumbled, and then looked thoughtful. “You know, there was a kid who got Akumatized once, and his evil power was centered around Christmas, and the kid literally willed Santa into existence. It was pretty cool.”

“You thought an Akuma was cool?”

“The Christmas Akumas were always actually pretty…” She trailed off. She could say ‘pretty easy to beat’, she would have to explain how she knew. “Pretty funny. And usually a lot softer than the other Akumas. At least, that’s what it looked like to me, anyway.” He gave her an almost sad look, and she tried not to think about his body language too much. He seemed sad, and she didn’t know if she wanted to know why or not. He was probably just sad she had to live through that as a civilian who had no control, and he would probably be even sadder if he knew she was the hero. A hero who had no control. 

“You know, I was going to get you a gift card, but I figured you would just use it to buy other people lunch and not yourself out of spite.” Was what he ended up saying. She blinked, and then laughed. She wondered what Luka would think of this guy.

* * *

“You should come over again tonight.”

“Why, when I know for a  _ fact _ you’re only doing that to keep an eye on me?” Marinette stuck her tongue out at him. Tim feigned offense. 

“I would never.” He scoffed. Somehow, she didn’t believe him. But that made her plan so much easier. 

* * *

  
  


“Marinagerie.” Batman nodded at her. She could practically see right through the mask. That was definitely  _ not _ the original Batman. This guy could do the voice as hard as he tried, but he sounded nothing like the other man. 

“You.” She nodded at him. He was confused by this, but tried not to let it show. “Sorry I’m late, I stopped somewhere, and the radio was playing Wait for Me from Hadestown and I got emotional.” Batwoman cracked a smile at that. 

“Oh that’s a mood.” She nodded. “Makes me so sad every time.”

“Like, honestly? Such a sad song because she dies in the end, but like, he puts so much emotion into that song, and-”

“We really need to get going.” Batman, New and Younger Batman, walked off the roof, and the two women followed him. 

* * *

Halfway through their patrol, Oracle came onto the comms. 

‘ _ Red Robin says he needs to take care of something, and Robin needs some help. _ ’

“Robin doesn’t need anything, he just wants someone to rant to.” Batwoman rolled her eyes. 

“He talks?” Batman deadpanned. 

_ ‘How about we send in the mouse? _ ’ Oracle spoke again. 

“On it.” Marinagerie threw her glowing pink rope towards a particularly tall building, and zoomed in Robin’s direction. 

* * *

It was mostly boring on his side of town, until it wasn’t. 

“Wow, lookie here, is this a drug deal I spot?” He jumped down in between three arguing people. 

“Why Robin, I think it is!” Marinagerie popped up next to him. 

“Alright, you have five seconds to-” he got cut up when they ran. “Argh! They split up!” Robin ran after one of them, but the other two ran in two different directions. 

“Multitude!” Marinagerie yelled, and in a flash of light, there were two of her. They split up, and ran after both of the criminals. 

Oracle watched from a nearby security tape as they used identical fighting styles to take down both men. She wondered how she split her attention like that. She guessed it was just magic. 

* * *

  
  
  


“Hi, I placed an order online for Cheng?” She walked up to the counter. Tim did a double-take.

“Yep! Here you go ma’am.” The boy behind the counter reached to go get it, but he hesitated. “Uh, we actually have two identical orders for the same name, did you maybe accidentally order it twice?” He asked her. And she thought she had been so slick. 

“No, it wasn’t a mistake, I used her name.” Tim popped up behind her. She slammed a fist down on the counter, and the poor barista boy jumped. She hadn’t seen his car out front, and she thought she had beaten him. 

“Damn you, Drake.” She grabbed both coffee’s and put both straws in her mouth at the same time. 

“So you damn me, and then drink what I give you?” He grabbed the cake pops and cookies. 

“I damn you, not your presents.” She grinned as she got into the passenger seat, the car parked in a different spot today. She took off her sunglasses, seeing as the car had tinted windows. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These uploads are gonna get spaced out a little more, seeing as they have much longer chapters than a lot of my other fics. whoops.

“Hi.” Batman did a double take at the bright white and orange girl next to him.  _ Where the hell did she come from?  _

“I’m not another form of Ladybug, but I have been told to tell you that my phone password is 1969 and my favorite english word is defenestration.” She twirled her bright orange flute in her hand, and he took a step back.

“Uh… thanks?” He blinked. “Can I… get your name?”

“I’m Red Fox. New to this identity, not new to being a part of the Miraculous Team.”

“Isn’t…”

“Red Fox very similar to Rena Rouge? Yes. Yes it is. But that’s not something you need to worry about.” She winked, her black suit with an orange center and white gloves seemingly glittering in the moonlight. 

“What are you even doing here? Do you have a purpose?” He didn’t mean to be rude, he just had to know. 

“Yup.”

“Are you…”

“Going to elaborate? No.” She ran to the edge of the building, but before she jumped over the end, she disappeared into a puff of glitter.  _ What the hell, _

“I see you’ve become acquainted with Rena’s powers.” Marinagerie dropped down where Red Fox had been standing moments ago.

“Rena?”

“Oh, please. You’re welcome to be in on some secrets now. You’ve met so much of my team you might as well know some fun facts about us.” She shrugged. 

“Are you going to turn into a puff of glitter too?” He asked warily. She giggled. 

“Rena’s images disappear when touched.” She reached out, and lightly pushed his shoulder. “I’m not a Mirage.”

“Mirage?”

“That's what her power is called. The Mirage.”

“Huh.”

“She’s here for this,” Marinagerie pointed to their right, where he looked to see Ladybug, Red Fox, and a fake Marinagerie fighting what seemed to be a ridiculously huge bird. 

“What-” He looked back and forth between the two. 

“We’re trying to make it look like all the Miraculous are still in the miracle box, and with me, instead of being spread out across the east coast.”

“Oh?”

“I have multiple permanent users helping me out with a project, but they’ve been users for a while. If people notice the same users appearing in different locations, they can see who’s been travelling that exact pattern and figure out their identities.”

“That’s smart, but why are you telling me?”

“Because. Only a dumbass would try and actively try to trick the man dubbed ‘world's greatest detective’. Or, the kid of him, anyway.” She shrugged. 

“I, uh, appreciate it?”

“You don’t have the whole ‘gritty’ thing down, do you?” She smirked at him, and he scowled.

“Ah ha! There it is!” She laughed, and he huffed. 

* * *

Red Robin listened to their conversation, paying more attention to them than watching where he was going.

“Hey.” Red Hood noticed after the third time he tripped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” He mumbled.

“Not convincing.”

_ ‘I’m going to be having Rena stay with me for a few days, appear a few times to make it look like I found a few new holders, then go back home when we think we’ve successfully convinced people.’ _ Her voice was fainter, since she wasn’t actually on the coms, and he was hearing her through Dick’s mic.

_ ‘That sounds like a solid plan.’ _

_ ‘I just need you to spread the word, because we’re staging fake fights. But the second one of yours tries to interfere, the whole gigs up. So if you see a Ladybug and a Marinagerie in the same place at the same time, don’t touch the fight.’ _

_ ‘I’ll let them know.’ _

_ ‘I really appreciate that. It means more to me than you know.’ _

“Ok, you really aren’t paying attention.”

“Sorry.”

“What’s up?”

“I… none of your business.”

“It’s my business of you fuck all of this up.”

“I’m working on it.” He growled, and Hood backed off. Suspiciously, but he did. 

* * *

“Hey, Tim, I’m going to be going out to breakfast with a friend this morning.” She called him the next morning. _ I thought you would be, _

“Oh, ok. I guess I’ll catch you for lunch then.”

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Who knows.” He heard a faint laugh in the background, and he figured that that must be Rena Rouge. 

* * *

“Hey.” She nodded at him as he headed into her office. Tim plopped down into a chair, having a massive headache.

“Marinette.” He mumbled loudly, and she threw a pen at him. 

“What, Drake?”

“I feel like shit.”

“Don’t go into a coffee coma again.” She rolled her eyes at him, and there was a knock at the door. He looked up to see a woman with fairly dark skin and dyed hair standing in the hallway.

“Hey!” She leaned over a little bit, looking back and forth between the two.

“Hey! Alya!” Marinette grinned up at the woman. 

_ “Is this the Tim guy you were talking about? He looks miserable.” _

_ “Yes, I am the Tim, and I feel worse than I look. _ ” He retorted in perfect French. She winced, but he just laughed. 

“Sorry. I’m used to people yelling at me to talk in english, I didn’t think you would speak french.” She apologized. 

“No, it’s fine, you can talk in whatever you want.” He shrugged. 

“Oh.”

“Tim, this is Alya Cesairé, she works for The Daily Planet, and she’s staying with me for a few days to work on a piece about the Miraculous moving from Paris to Gotham.” _ Looks like she’s working on it in more ways than one. _

“Oh, really?”

“I was selected because I used to actually be one of the very few people Ladybug would grant interviews to. She was all about supporting the local kids.” Probably because she was friends with the local kids. 

“Awe, that was really sweet of her.”

“Yeah, it was!”

“So I can imagine you’re a part of this dangerous team of hers she keeps mentioning?” He noticed them share a look, but pretended not to. 

“Team?”

“Yeah, she said something about a team of ass-kicking people who could tear down a person on multiple fronts?”

“Ah, he’s onto us.” Marinette made a playful smirk. “Yeah, she might pick up a few…  _ flash drives _ along the way.”

“I might?” Alya seemed taken aback by this.

“Chloé had a break-though in her field, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I have physical evidence.” She gestured to the box under her desk. “I just… it’s really solid evidence, and I don’t want you to get killed for it.”

“Yeah, well…” Alya shrugged, not looking the least bit worried. “Things happen sometimes.”

“You are a strange one, Miss Cesairé.”

“So I’ve been told.”

* * *

The week passed by, and he spent nearly every night staying at the office late, not to actually get work done, but to watch out the window for whatever Marinette was up to. 

The first night, he saw a fake turtle hero, the next a fake monkey. Then a fake dragon. Then a fake snake. Then he saw a fake Pegasus, and he wondered why they kept it so similar to the real one, until-

Pegasus knocked on the window.

_ Oh. It’s not a fake. That’s the real Pegasus _ . He rushed to open the window.

“I have been informed that a Miss Marinette Cheng works on this floor? Is this true?” He tilted his head sideways. 

“Yeah, next room over, why?” 

“You know, you shouldn’t really give that information out so easily.” He couldn’t see Pegasus’ eyes, but he could hear the suspicion. 

“Yeah, well, she’s easily smart enough to find out your identity and kick your ass in more ways than one.” He shot back, carefully. “She’s the smartest person I know, save for a few weirdos.”

“Hm.” Pegasus didn’t like that answer, but pushed past him. 

“Hey, where are you-”

“Next room over.” He answered, and jumped through a black hole he made. What the fuck. But this was a problem for another day. 

* * *

“Ooh!” Marinette clapped, and Tim peered through the door to see what she was talking about. A big cardboard box sat on her desk. “My presents are here!”

“Do you regularly get presents from men in magical glasses?” He joked. She probably did.

“Ah, that was just Pegasus. He’s… a strange one. Has been ever since his debut at the London Incident.”

“The what?”

“A lady on a train got akumatized, and we got lost in space and Pegasus brought us back to earth. It was pretty fun, honestly.”

“You got _ lost  _ in  _ space _ ?” He blinked. “And you think it was  _ fun _ ?”

“Yup. But Ladybug and Chaton Noir were able to save the day! Clearly, since I’m standing here, and not, you know, in space. Ooh! A new pen.” 

“No, wait a second, let me get this straight,-”

“I wonder if this is a taser pen?” She said loudly, and he stopped. 

“I really hope you give me straight answers one of these days.” Her flinch did not go unnoticed. 

“Maybe someday.” She whispered, and went back to her little box of goodies. He just shook his head and walked out. 

* * *

_ ‘Hey, my family is being a bunch of assholes, can we hang out tonight?’ _ He texted her. She bit her lip before responding, 

_ ‘Yeah.’ ‘My house guest has gone home.’ _

_ ‘Fabulous.’ ‘Well, not fabulous that she’s gone.’ ‘She seemed lovely’ ‘just fabulous that I can have a reason to leave the house.’ _

_ ‘Yeah, I know what you meant _ .’

“Tikki, what do I do?” She mumbled as she poured over her closet. 

* * *

  
  


“Tragedy has struck.” Tim grumbled as Mairnette opened the door for him. 

“Oh?” She questioned, and then opened the door wider to reveal Jason.

“Hey.” He nodded, and pushed past both of them.

“Ah. So that’s the tragedy.”

“Glad you understand.” She snorted, and headed back into the kitchen.

“I wasn’t really planning on having people over, that’s why I’m making, you know, boxed food. And not real food. But I already started, so it’s…. Whatever.”

“What were you making?”

“Hamburger helper, because I’m lazy and don’t want to make difficult food.” Mairnette deadpanned from her kitchen stool that she climbed up on.

“Oh, I’ll hamburger help you out with that, then.” Jason grinned.

“You’re not a hamburger helper, you’re a hamburger hindrance.” Marinette rolled her eyes at him. 

“Yeah. You’re a ham-burden on society.” Tim added.

“No throwing knives in my kitchen unless it’s an emergency, Jay.” Marinette didn’t have to look up from her phone to see him reaching for one from her knife block. 

“Being insulted-”

“Doesn’t count as life-threatening.”

“Fuck you.”

“Watch your language.” Tim rolled his eyes.

“Fuck no.”

“Fuck yes you will.” Marinette tried to hide her giggle as she joined in on the teasing. 

“Seriously? Two seconds ago you two were arguing and Marinette was on my side, and now your both ganging up on me? Where do your loyalties really lie, you assholes?”

“To the greater comedy.” Marinette grinned at him. 

“Personally, I side with being the biggest ass possible.”

“Why do I believe that, though?”

“Because it’s painfully true.”

* * *

  
  
  


“We’ve got a tip-off.” Marinette rushed into Tims office the next morning. “And hey also can we, like, stick a door in this wall? I hate having to go all the way over to go all the way back when it would take me, like, four second to walk directly from your desk to mine.”

“No, we can’t stick a door in the wall, as much as I would love that, because you’re not here permanently, and I have no idea who will be in that space next. I don’t want someone I don’t like having that advantage.”

“Awe.” She grumbled, and then remembered why she was there in the first place. “Oh! Ok, so, I’ve got news that some people met up in a club and discussed some things and stuff that is very sneaky suspicious.”

“Very sneaky suspicious?” He questioned.

“Oh yeah. The sneakiest.”

“And what might that be?”

“I…” She faltered. “I have yet to figure that out.” He sighed. 

“And how do you know that this is-”

“Trust me.” She gave him an earnest look, and he just tapped his pen on his desk. 

“Fine. I trust you.”

“You better. My awesomeness depends on it.”

“Keep me updated!”

“I always will!” She yelled from the hallway.

* * *

Nino’s tip was… less than awesome. He had managed to figure out how to get the crowd sounds down in the background, the sound quality was fine, but the words made less than perfect sense. 

It wasn’t the lunch code, so it took her a while to figure it out again. 

It was about a meeting. But then again, wasn’t everything?

They mentioned club sandwiches.  _ What the hell is a club sandwich? _

She googled it. It was a sandwich with more than two slices of bread. Huh.

They started talking about how much materials they would need for the sandwich. That was where it got interesting.

She wrote down all of the numbers and their coordinating codes, now stressfully trying to figure out what the codes represented as the audio ended. 

This was going to be a while. A while that she did not have.

She sent the clips to Sabrina. 

* * *

  
  


“Are you ok?”

“In what sense?”

“Any?”

“No.”

“Then why did you make me clarify?”

“I wanted to see what you assumed I was going through.” Tim frowned down at Marinette as she laid on her office floor in the dark again. 

“Got any case progress?” He tried. 

“I murdered a pretty big company this morning.” She nodded. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah, for chemical waste.”

“Wait, you’ve been working on all of these files at the same time?” He opened her filing cabinet and took a peek in the top drawer.

It was almost empty. 

“I’ve been doing it as discreetly as possible.”

“Why?”

“So LL Bean man doesn’t catch on.”

“LL Bean?” He questioned. 

“Ah, New England thing, I guess.” She shrugged. 

“You’re French though?” He was even more confused. 

“Where the fuck do you think Harvard is located? The middle of the Seine?” She made a face at him. 

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” He looked back down at her again, and then sat on the floor next to her. “So, what’s with the brainstorming stance?”

“Huh?”

“Your power-pose for thinking is laying on the floor. It looks suspiciously an awful lot like taking a nap.” He pointed out. 

She was taking a nap.

She had done enough work for ten people with the help of five. 

And now he was sitting criss-cross on her floor next to her, and she had to fight every urge to crawl over into his lap like a cat and sleep that way. 

“I bet the other people here think awful things of me for my techniques.” She mumbled, and rolled over onto her side. 

“Nah, I think they’re impressed with what you can accomplish.”

“What I can accomplish and what my methods are, are mutually exclusive events.” She mumbled, and caved to her emotions as she scooted over and put her head on one of his knees. 

“Am I being held hostage here?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh good. I’ll get to tell the board meeting they’ve been cancelled.”

“Oh tea sis what did they do?” She teased. 

“Ha.” He rolled his eyes. “Very funny. No, I think it's a general rule of thumb if a pretty woman is using you as support, it is officially illegal to move.”

“Awe, you think I’m pretty?” She yawned. 

“Yeah.” He set his coffee on the floor, and started to play with her hair. “Yeah, I think you're fairly pretty.”

“Wow.” She mumbled, and promptly started snoring. 

His phone went off a few minutes later. 

He cursed. 

“Hello?”

“Mr. Drake, where on earth are you?”

“I’m stuck, sir.” He responded.

“Stuck where? In traffic?”

“No, I’m stuck on the floor.”

“Stuck how?”

“In a way that I cannot move.”

“Well how long will you be, then?”

“Unsure.”

“Unsure?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

“Well can you give me a time range so we know when we can start this meeting?”

“Have it without me, you’ll do fine.” He did not wait for an answer, and hung up.

He started using the tiny screen to type with one hand, and used his other hands to balance her head on his knee. 

“Good morning sunshine, it is five o’clock in the evening.” Someone was teasing her. 

She scrunched her nose, sat up, and scowled at him. 

“Oh, it’s you.” She mumbled and laid back down.

“Oh no.” Tim pushed her onto the floor. “Not again.”

“Not again what?”

“You slept for like three hours. I have missed two very important meetings because of you falling asleep on me.”

“Well then why didn't you push me onto the floor earlier?” She grumbled, and pulled herself to her feet.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, and got up to walk out the door. He stopped in the doorway as she sat down behind her desk to see if she heard back from Sabrine. “I guess…” She looked up.

“Hm?”

“I guess you just looked cute.” She looked down at the table and sighed, too tired to be flustered. “Oh, and next time? Try to do it in my office so I can actually get work done at the same time.”

She put her head in her hands as he walked out. 

She opened her email after she was sure he was gone. 

“Oh god Sabrina that is too much information.” She mumbled, staring at the insanely long email, and got to work decoding when she had finished it. 

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

Lex Luthor wanted to visit.

Luthor had something he wanted to inquire with him about, and hadn’t specified what. 

That made him more than a little nervous. 

But he knew how to cover up being nervous. 

He was Red motherfucking Robin after all. 

World's coolest detective. 

Aside from Marinette. 

Who was technically a lawyer. 

And he was technically a CEO.

But she was Marinagerie so they could probably be considered a detective. 

That could work. 

But back to the panicking. 

Lex Luthor was dropping in, barely announced, in three hours. 

He was half tempted to call Conner. 

But at least if something went insanely wrong he could always scream loud enough for Marinette to come running. 

If she wasn’t sleeping in a pizza, that is. 

“Ah, Mr. Drake.” He walked in, two men behind him. 

“Mr. Luthor.” He responded, dead in expression. 

Like he almost always was. 

“We appear to be having a predicament.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you see, we both seemed to have-” The door swung open, and Marinette stormed in. 

At first, he was worried she was going to rip a new one into him, but instead, she walked past Luthor and straight to him. 

“Uh, Marinette?” He frowned as she climbed and sat on his lap, pulled her knees to her chest, and fell asleep. 

Again. 

Well, he _had_ said ‘next time do it in my office so I can get some work done’ but he had not expected her to take him seriously.

“What is this?” Luthor made a disgusted face at her. 

“Uh, this is Cheng. She has less personal boundaries than Damian, so if you were saying something, you might as well say it.”

“This was supposed to be a closed meeting.” He practically growled at him. 

“You have your people, I have mine.” He shrugged, gesturing to the bodyguards behind the man. 

“This is a very important matter we have to discuss, and I would prefer it if-”

“Let me guess, you want to ask how we both managed to get a lawyer from the same firm?”

“How did you-”

“The one known as Dupain and Cheng?” He sighed, gesturing to the woman who was leaning on him. “Yeah, you want me to do something about it. Clearly, that’s not happening.”

He could try and bribe him. 

He could try and hold Chloé hostage, or something. 

He could threaten her. 

But that would be _incredibly_ dumb. 

“Look, all I’m saying is it would be a _ great shame _ if something were to happen between them if something were to happen between us.” Lex tried. 

“So you’re saying you're worried about a law firm hypothetically trying to fight itself?”

“Well, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it? Neither of us would get anywhere.  _ Should _ there be a problem.”

“Well Lexie, I don’t plan on doing anything illegal in the next few months, do you?” He challenged him. 

Eventually, he finally just stormed out and left. 

As soon as he was really gone, her eyes snapped open. 

“Think he suspects Chloé?” She asked. He jumped. 

She had heard everything. 

She was fully awake. 

He tried to stifle a laugh. 

“You faked it, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh my god, you did.” He hugged her, and she leaned her head back on him. “You are the absolute best.”

“I know.” She smiled confidently. 

“You know…” He decided to try something funny.

“Know what?” She let go of her knees, and let her feet fall to the floor as she looked up at him from where she was slouching against him. 

He leaned towards her, put his mouth right next to her ear, and spoke in a low tone,

“You’re getting dirt on my chair.” She scowled, and got up to leave. “No, wait, come back.” He half-assedly tried. 

* * *

She was jittery as she looked at all of her decoded crimes in front of her. 

So much crime. 

So little time. 

She was contemplating what to do with the information next when she got a text from Max. 

He had found a way to pin Luthor to the lunch codes as well as the sandwich codes. 

She let out a loud cheer. 

“I’ve got him!” She leaned back in her chair, and threw her arms into the air, kicking her feet like a little kid. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” She stood up, and danced her way into Tim’s office, all while cheering  _ ‘I’ve got him!’ _ the whole way. 

“Got what?” Tim frowned at her. 

“Oh I have him now! He’s toast!” She cheered. 

“Who, Luthor?” His eyes lit up in anticipation.

“Yes!” He stood up from his chair in amazement. 

“That’s… that’s awesome!” He smiled, and she ran over to hug him. “When do you plan on making your next move?”

“Oh no. Not yet. I still have  _ so much _ shit to tear through.” She grinned, excited about the idea of more work, and squeezed him once more before letting go.

“Like what?”

“Now that I have him super-pinned for the big stuff, I get to rip into all the little shit.”

“The little shit?”

“Employee contracts, billing stuff, legal shortcuts, mistreatment, breaking of labor laws, money mishandling, you know, all that fun stuff.” She shrugged, and headed back to her desk. 

“Well, have fun.”

“Oh trust me, I will.” She practically bounced out. 

* * *

It took her two weeks. 

Two weeks of refusing to go to sleep until she dug to the absolute bottom of everything she came across, printing, highlighting, filing, starting over. 

One assistant was asked to make a trip to Staples to buy a hundred more of those manilla folders. 

It was paid for by Marinette.

* * *

Tim walked into her office to see a literal mountain of paper. 

It was a neat mountain of paper, at least. 

But still. A mountain. 

There were three stacks of those envelopes, all lined against the wall, each about three and a half feet in height. 

He took the one off the top in the closest pile, and scanned it. 

Medical records?

“Mishandled and misfiled insurance policies, courtesy of Chlo-B.” She said from the other side of a stack of papers. He hadn’t even asked. 

But when he looked closer, sure enough, that’s what it was. 

“Huh.” He set it back, carefully putting it where he found it. “Are you sure we have a right to sue him for this?”

“You? No. Me? Yes.”

“Wait, what?”

“You as a company can sue him for being in breach of contract. I have that down. But me as a lawyer with reasonable doubt has the right to look into him. I  _ just so happen _ to be using your resources to do so.” She grinned at him as she shrugged. 

“Wait a second, you’re doing all of this because you  _ feel  _ like it? We’re not… if you’re not doing this for us, then-” He was slightly confused about how this worked. 

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong I’m being paid to be here.” She assured him. “It’s just what you _ say _ you're paying me to do and what I’m  _ actually  _ doing may be… two different things.”

“And what are we paying you to do?”

“Cause general mischief.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Yeah. As a joke, I think I actually put that whole complete sentence somewhere in the contract. Forgot where, though.”

“So that’s what you meant, the day I met you, by you were being paid to ‘make me miserable’.” He recounted. 

“Yup.” She grinned as she typed. “Run around the office, wreak some minor havoc, go home.” Marinette was sipping coffee through a big silly bendy straw today. 

He figured she had gotten it at some fair or something. 

“Am I succeeding?”

“Look at this mess.” He gestured around the room. “I think you've caused havoc enough.”

“Good.” She grinned through her crazy straw at her computer. 

At the end of the second week, she had everything on a massive hard drive. 

* * *

“Ah, Marinette.” Tim waved her down on her way out one evening. 

“Hm?” She asked through a straw in her mouth. 

“I wanted you to meet someone.” Tim gestured to a tall guy who seemed to be eyeing her strangely. 

“Mh-hm.” She nodded, digging through her bag for something. She tried to say something else, but gave up. 

She dropped her bag on the floor, and sighed, holding the straw in her hand. 

“What’s up?”

“This is my best friend, his name’s Conner, he’s really cool.”

“Hi really cool guy named Connor, I’m Marinette.” She stuck out a hand,  _ not _ the one with the spit-covered straw in it. 

“Hi.” He blinked, seemingly coming out of a confused state, and shook her hand. “So, how long have you worked here?”

“About two months.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I haven’t done very much, though. I would have had much more work done in this time period, but being annoying to Boss Man is pretty high on my priority list, and hinders a lot of my productivity.” He raised an eyebrow at her vocabulary as well as the strange accent. 

“You… have excellent grammar, but-”

“I’m from Paris, so my first language is french, but I lived in Boston for four years and tragically picked up an accent.” She cringed. He snorted. 

“Yeah, people from Boston tend to have the weirdest accents out of everyone.”

“Hey.” She frowned playfully, and picked up her bag again.

“I can see why Timbo likes you.”

“What?” She almost dropped the bag right back onto the floor. 

Tikki would not like her for that. 

“What, me? Did I say something? No I didn’t, I didn’t say anything. Tim definitely doesn't have a crush or anything.” Conner panicked. 

“Conner!” Tim shrieked at him. 

People around them started to listen in from the increasing drama. 

She just laughed it off, and shook her head as she started to walk away. 

* * *

“You have to tell me everything about her, immediately.” Bart demanded. 

“She used big words and looked like trouble.” Conner supplied. 

“Oh no, I bet he’s already planning a wedding.” Bart sighed, and crashed back down onto the couch. 

“She called him Boss Man so she clearly doesn’t take him seriously, and she was wearing ridiculous high heeled boots and looked almost as if she were headed to a concert and not to work.”

“Oh no.”

“What do you mean  _ oh no _ ?” Raven frowned at them. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I can just  _ hear _ Drake planning a wedding from here.” 

* * *

That Conner guy had to be making a joke. 

Like, seriously? A crush? What were they, middle schoolers?

Or maybe adults get crushes too. 

Who knew. 

Not Marinette. 

She knew nothing. 

Nothing at all. 

She sighed as she gently set her bag down on the couch, and Tikki phased out of it. 

“Marinette.” She whined. 

“Sorry Tikki. I panicked.”

“Panicked? Why, your super hot client thinks you're cute and you’re not gonna do anything about it?” Tikki grumbled. 

“Oh, shut up, Tikki.” She sighed, not really meaning it. 

* * *

Red Robin ran into Marinagerie, quite literally. 

They were going in opposite directions, and collided. 

“Oh, hey, Marinagerie, what’s up?” 

“Asshole’s with guns at the docks.” She took off. 

He followed. 

It was a little hard to keep up, but he did. 

She landed on the ground, and he landed next to her.

“How do you know?” He wondered where her information came from. 

“It’s for, um, work.” She waved him off. 

“Yeah, no I just meant-” She cut him off by sticking a hand over his mouth. 

He glared down at her hand, or he would, if he could see it. 

He watched as a boat pulled up. 

Sure enough, guys with guns were in fact on the boat.

“What the fuck is the plan here?” He said into her hand. 

“I didn’t have one.” She whispered back. “I also didn’t plan for a tag-along.”

“Hey.”

“I don’t know entirely what's going on, but I know it’s connected to a case a friend of mine is working on.” 

“Huh?”

“Shut up.” She mumbled something, and her boots started to glow as she shrank down. 

Suddenly, there were three of her. 

And she was picking a fight.

He sighed, and followed her. 

* * *

“What do we have here?” She cooed as she opened a fairly large toolbox. “Hm.”

Red Robin moved carefully over the unconscious bodies strewn about, and peered over her shoulder. 

A serious amount of highly illegal weapons sat in the box. 

“They thought they were some clever, huh?” She shut the box, and pulled out a cellphone. 

“Whoa whoa whoa, what are you doing?” He was very confused. 

“I told you. Work.” She gave him a look that dared him to tell her off, and hit dial. “Yo, I got the box.” She said, and waited. “It’s better, it’s highly illegal weapons.” She waited again. He wished he could hear what the other person was saying. But alas, he could not. “What’s your ETA?” She nodded at nothing. “I’ll be here. And apparently, Red Robin can’t mind his own damn business, so he’s here too.” She added slowly, quite obviously meaning ‘so watch what you say and do’ but that went… mostly implied. 

“On it.” He heard as she pulled the phone away from her ear, and turned her attention back to the box. 

She inspected it a second, and then lifted it up over her head. 

“Whoa!” He ducked as the large thing swung near his head. “The fuck?”

“What?” She frowned at him. “Intimidated by a girl with strength?” 

“Uh…” He didn’t know how to answer that. “Who did you call?”

“GCPD.” She shrugged. 

“Huh? I thought… Why would you hand this over to the police? They really don’t like people like you, you know.”

She turned and winked at him. 

“This officer has no choice but to like me.” She grinned, and jumped off the boat at an unnatural height. 

All these weeks later, and he still wasn’t used to the kind of person she was. Or the not-person. Inhuman? Whatever. 

“Huh?”

“You’ll see.” She winked, and a few minutes later, a car pulled up with Dick Grayson in it. But he wasn’t driving it. 

“Sabrina!” She waved, and the girl behind the wheel marched over. 

“What the hell is this, Mouse?” The girl sighed. “I can’t sleep if you can’t sleep and I swear to god you  _ never sleep. _ ” 

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too, now,” Marinagerie kicked open the box. 

“Oh sweet je- My goodness.” Sabrine grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, and started to pull things out of the box. 

“I guess I’ll start taking care of this mess.” Dick looked at the strewn about bodies confusedly. 

“Thanks.” Marinagerie nodded at him, and squatted down next to the other woman, Sabrina. “What's the plan on your end?” Sabrina looked one of the weird guns over. 

“Seems to be some sort of futuristic tech of some sort. Get most of them into evidence lock-up, take one or two to a lab. Get them thoroughly checked through.”

“Whoever made them isn’t gonna be happy about this. They'll probably want them back.” Red Robin pointed out. 

“Yeah, I’ll get someone one that.” Sabrina nodded. 

“Huh?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m on a first-name basis with superheroes.” The detective deadpanned, looking up at him from where she had been checking the gun out. “I think I can keep one box of weapons a little bit safe.”

“Oh.” He recoiled slightly. 

“So, how long will the papers take to go through?”

“Depends on how many tests we run, and how far down the list it is for the lab.” Sabrina shrugged. 

“Damn.”

“But I’ll tell them Red Robin put in a request to make it priority, they all know he was here.”

“Hey!” He complained. Marinagerie giggled. 

“And they’re more likely to get it through faster if I lie and say it was him.”

“That is true.” The mouse agreed. 

Red Robin just sighed. 

Dick was clearly giving him a very confused look, he ignored him. 

A few more officers arrived on the scene, Sabrina and Marinagerie exchanged a few more words, and then both disappeared. 

Red Robin just went home, confused as fuck. 

* * *

“Have any more luck with your case?”

“So much luck!” Marinnete grinned at him in the coffee shop the next morning.

She bounced down the sidewalk to the car. He tried not to laugh at her. 

“Oh? Any new development?”

“I got him for illegal weapons trafficking, but you wanna know the best part?” She smiled at him as he slid into the driver's seat. 

“What’s the best part?”

“We know the person they came from, and we can connect them to some pretty big names, and therefore, by default, we can connect this asshole to them, and it’s fucking fantastic.” She shifted her shoulders slightly, in a show of pride. 

He nodded slowly, a thought that he had been putting out of his mind for a while slowly coming back again. 

“Hey, Marinette?”

“Yeah?”

“When this… when this all comes around… for, you know, like the trial and all that…”

“I know.” She lost her sudden burst of energy, calming down fairly quickly. 

“I’m worried about you.”

“I know. I get it.” She said quietly. “He’s a crazy person, and won’t hesitate to resort to awful means to get what he wants.” There was a silent pause in the car as they stopped at a red light. 

“And what if… ok, there is hardly a what if here. He will try and go after you, you are aware of this right?” He gripped the wheel a bit more than necessary. 

“And when he does, I’ll be ready.” She assured him softly. 

“How? He could… he could do anything, how will you be ready for whatever he has planned?”

“I’ll have house guests.” She smiled out the window, but he saw her reflection. 

He didn’t like her confidence with this. 

Confidence and arrogance caused unpreparedness. But when had he ever seen her unprepared?

Then again, he had only known her a few weeks. Not very long. He felt like he hardly knew her at all. 

“House guests?” He sighed. The light changed. 

“If he manages to get past  _ my _ friends, I will be genuinely impressed.” She mumbled. 

“You may have your plan, but I’ll have mine too.”

_ “Your _ plan?” She looked over at him, away from the window.

“I will have someone inform the Bats to be on higher alert for crime in your area.” He said in a warning tone, almost. 

She squirmed slightly in her seat. 

It suddenly occurred to him that ‘house guests’ may have meant the Miraculous Team.

Oh. 

No wonder that would have made her uncomfortable. 

To be honest, his plan was not actually to call in Bruce. It was actually to call in Kon and Bart, but it’s not like she needed to know that.

“I’ll be fine, it’s not that big of a deal.” He could tell she was fully aware she was lying. 

“It’s a much bigger deal than that, Marinette.” 

“I know, I just… need you to trust me that I can handle it.” 

“Whatever.” He sighed, and pulled into his parking spot. 

She got out, and gave him a strange look before saying, 

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not going anywhere, ok?” Dying. She meant she wasn’t going anywhere as in she wasn’t dying. Welp, this was a great start to his day.

“Ok.” He didn’t look her in the eyes as he locked the car, and shut the door. She walked off, and he messed with his hair in the reflection of the dark tinted window as an excuse to get distance between them. 

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Max’s contract got up in two weeks, and Sabrina had set her contract to expire at the same time. Chloé was a bit more difficult to get to Gotham. 

They planned to announce their court date after the end of the two weeks. 

In the meantime, Marinette started her profiles on the next companies after that.

She compiled her information in different hard drives, outside of her special Luther case drives. 

Chloé decided to remain in Metropolis for the time being, wondering what would happen if she stayed in the building. That worried Marinette. She would rather have her Cat closer to her side than farther away. But Chloé was persistent. 

“If they ask you to go up against me, will you? I mean, even if you intentionally do terribly, you still get a pay day out of this anyway, so…”

“You’re kidding me, Spots, right?” Chloé sounded disgusted with her. “Remember what you said? We don’t fight for terrorists, we just get on their payroll.” She reminded her. “I will do  _ nothing _ for that man, I will not lift a finger to help him in any manner.”

“Cool, so are you… what’s the plan from here?”

“I quit, he threatens me, Bunnyx shows up and drags me to safety. Alix is already on board.” Marinette sighed. 

Now she knew how Tim felt. 

Chloé seeme to to be a bit in over her head here with the confidence levels. 

“Well, quit soon, would you? I need as many people around when we make this announcement as possible.”

“I’ll get to it when I get to it.” She didn’t like the sound of that. 

The two weeks ended, and she got a sudden amount of house guests. 

Nino had had to quit his temp job at that particular club, they had no idea how long this would actually take and she wanted him around as much as possible. 

She should have gotten a bigger apartment, now that she looked around. Sure, it was a fairly two-bedroom place she was paying for on an extremely successful lawyer's salary, but… Well, with all of them, it might be a bit cramped. She was having Alix, Max, Nino, Alya, Sabrina, Chloé, and herself all in one place. 

* * *

“You look miserable and you weren’t here all that late last night so something happened outside of work and I kinda want to know what it was.” Ah, Tim. That sexy pain in the ass. 

“Ran out of Doritos. Unfortunately, a local grocery store is open twenty four-seven which  _ does _ in fact include three in the morning.” She grunted in response. 

“What do you mean  _ unfortunately?  _ Wouldn’t it be a  _ good _ thing if you wanted Doritos and the store was open?” 

“Not for me, for Nino and Alix, who _ insisted  _ they needed me to come too and that I couldn’t stay home alone.” She yawned, and scowled at the dashboard. 

“Oh?”

“Yup.” She got two frappuccinos today, and she was now trying to drink both of them at the same time like a little kid who was pretending to be a walrus. “I don’t need coffee, I need a fucking redbull and also maybe a Bang. And a Monster. And a Rockstar. And a… Full Throttle. And  _ whatever else _ there is for energy drinks.”

“I’ll tell one of the interns.” 

“Oh, like one of the interns you so mistakenly thought was me?” She grinned as she closed her eyes. 

“Oh fuck off, that was an accident.” She chuckled softly as she fought to stay awake. 

* * *

She almost stumbled into his office two hours later. 

“Yo, Drake, I lost my phone, can you call it?” She frowned, and looked all around. 

“Shouldn’t you be looking under your own desk?” He called her anyway. 

“Nah, when I came in here this morning, I’m pretty sure I set it down, right here-” She tapped the wood top- “And then I think I accidentally nudged it off, I think.” She mumbled as she stifled a yawn. 

“You sure seem to think it’s here.” He sighed, but sure enough, he felt a buzzing sound next to his foot. 

He looked down, a little impressed she remembered where she had dropped it in the kind of mental state she was in.

But then he saw the name at the top of the screen. 

Months ago, when she had first gotten the phone, he had stuck his name as Tim and put a city emoji next to it. He had put it like that because all of her other contacts had only a first name, maybe a nickname, and either one or two emojis next to it. He had been genuinely curious to see if she would leave it like that. 

But this was not what he had written all those weeks ago. 

This said Boss Man Drake, and… and a heart emoji. 

She had a little heart emoji. On her phone. Next to his nickname. 

Discreetly, he leaned down, and flipped it over before picking it up, pretending he saw nothing. 

“Ah!” She grinned, and took it. He hung up, hoping in her mental state she wouldn’t make any connections. “You’re the best, Tim, I fucking love you.” She grinned, and left again. 

_ Yeah, apparently you do. _

Conner was gonna get an earful about this tonight. 

“Dude what do I do?” He asked nervously. 

“What do you do about what?” 

“I told you! She put a little heart next to my name in her phone, and then I pretended not to entice and now I kinda feel like an ass, but also, that was cute as fuck and I love it, and I just- Argh!”

“Tell her you saw it. It’s literally that simple.”

“But what if she gets all flustered and upset and then never talks to me ever again and then I have to move to Alaska in embarrassment?!”

“Rob, that will literally never happen.” Conner sighed. “Ever.”

“But-”

“If it’s her reaction that’s concerning you, text her the day before you know she has a day off, and then it gives her time to think up what to do next.”

“Huh.” He thought that over. She could choose whether or not to reply, and gave her time to think over what to say. “Yeah, that’s kinda smart actually.”

“Yeah, no shit. I just call first dibs on speeches at your wedding.”

“KON!”

* * *

She stared at the notification on her phone. 

_Boss Man Drake_ ** _♥️_** _: Just letting you know I totally saw what my name is in your phone. Ps, I think it’s pretty cute._

She felt her stomach drop at the message. 

She stood frozen in her doorway, her bag dropped onto the floor, and her friends a bit concerned. 

“What is it? Major attack? Hawkmoth has returned?  _ Someone’s dead!?” _ Alix jumped to conclusions.

“The guy I like knows I like him and thinks it cute.” She said in a horrified tone. 

“Oh.” Everyone relaxed, and then realised what she said.

“Wait, what?” Alya jumped up, and Marinette quickly shut her phone off. 

* * *

She had opened the message. 

She had not answered said opened message. 

He began to panic, wondering if he had just ruined everything. 

“Drake.” Damian gave him a disappointed look. “You idiot.”

“I know, she probably doesn’t like me, and she’s gonna hate me even more once she knows that I know-”

“You’re an idiot for thinking she doesn’t like you.” Damian stated before seemingly disappearing into thin air. 

In reality, Tim had been staring at the wall for nearly ten minutes before blinking and thinking only a half a second had passed. 

“There’s a possibility she likes me?” He mumbled.

Whatever, that was a problem for another day. 

* * *

“Hey, Cara, what’s that?” Marinette pointed out the window at a strange figure watching her from a few buildings down and across the street, a few hours later. “He hasn’t moved in a few minutes, and he’s looking our way.”

“Don’t know, but I’ll go find out.” He headed out, and transformed before going to check out this person. 

* * *

Superboy, the first, watched as she walked up to the window. 

Unfortunately for him, she seemed to look his way.

Damnit, Robin was gonna kill him for this. 

“Hey, Cara, what’s that?” She said to a guy, Nino, she had called him previously. “He hasn’t moved in a few minutes, and he’s looking our way.”

Fuck.

He’d been found out. 

“Don’t know, but I’ll go find out.” 

Damnit, now he had to figure out what to do about this. 

“Uh, Red, I think I’ve been found out.” he said into the comms. 

“What?” Bart cackled. “What did your dumb ass do?”

“I swear to god Kon I will end you.” Red Robin snapped through his ears. “End. You.”

“Loud and clear.” He sighed, and watched as the other guy walked out of the room. 

But then he held his hand out, mumbled something, and-

“Oh holy shit.”

“What?”

“Uh, Red, did you conveniently forget to mention something?”

“Huh? OH SHIT! What color is he?” 

“Green?”

“Carapace!” He yelled. “That’s Carapace!”

“Oh no.”

“Oh no indeed.”

* * *

Carapace dropped down onto the roof, and glared at the tall guilty-looking guy in a superman t-shirt. 

“You have ten secidns to give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you for stalking my best friend. Go.”

“Red Robin told me to.” He blurted out. Carapace narrowed his eyes at the man.

“Who the fuck is Red Robin?”

“Who the fuck is Carapce?” A voice sounded behind him, and he whirled around to throw his shield. The flash of white and red disappeared, and his shield bounced back into his hands. He expected the other guy to attack while his head was turned, but shockingly, he stayed put. 

“Nice throw.” He offered. “I’m the OG Superboy, this idiot is yet another Flash. Red Robin says that Marinette might be… in need of observation.”

“And how does that guy know what she’s up to?” 

“Uhhhh…”

“He’s taken special interest?” The white and red guy offered. Nino didn’t like that. “After the museum incident.” 

Oh. 

Right. 

That. 

He guessed that could be an acceptable reason to keep someone under surveillance. 

But it was still his friend they were watching and, and he didn’t like that. It freaked him out a bit. 

“Tell this red-whoever I don’t appreciate this. I can watch her just fine. Plus, I was  _ actually invited _ to stay, unlike you people.” He crossed his arms. 

“Well excuse us, but this is  _ his _ city and if things go wrong here, he’ll feel like shit for not intervening.”

“Alright, look.” He readied his shield. “There are not one, not two, but  _ seven _ people more powerful than you in that room right now. If someone tried to break in, they would be royally fucked. Now please, kindly, fuck off.” He gave them one last chance.

“Don’t plan on going anywhere.” The guy in the t-shirt crossed his arms as well. 

“Well we have a problem then.” 

“Oh no.” Impulse, he figured, sighed. “I really don’t want to fight you.”

Carapace smirked slightly.

“I can arrange that.” He threw his shield, and when the speedster tried to dodge it, he activated Shell-ter. He was trapped. 

“What did you do?” Superboy narrowed his eyes at him, dividing his attention between Carapace and his shield. 

“He’ll be fine, unless he hurts himself. It’s just an indestructible shield. Nothing dangerous.” He kept his tone even. “If you promise to leave us alone, I’ll let him go.”

“Us?”

“Me. My girlfriend. My best friend. Our team. Leave. And you can have him back.”

There was a apsue, he was listening to something in his ears. 

“Whatever. But this isn’t over. You can expect a visit from Robin tomorrow.”

“Fun.” Carapace said with an obviously fake-smiled, and reached his hand out. The shield shot back into his hand, the green dropping. He waited for them to leave first. They waited for him to leave first. They stood there for nearly a whole minute before they finally got the clue and left first. 

He watched as they went, giving them distance. 

* * *

“That could have gone better.” Marinette sighed. 

“Tell me about it. I thought I was going to have to intervene.” Sabrina agreed. “Man, I wonder what it would be like to stick a Super with venom.” 

“I really don't want to find out.” Marinette shook her head. 

* * *

She had the next day off of work. 

She decided to spend the whole day watching dumb movies, and plotting how to talk to confront Tim. She had no idea how she was going to do that. 

The second the clock hit five, she grabbed some small glasses to do some shots. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Not day drinking, that’s for sure.”

“You… Are hilarious.” Sabrina joined her. 

“Hey, wait a second, aren’t you on Me duty tonight? You can’t drink on the job.”

“Nah, Chloé’s on You duty tonight.” She shook her head. 

“As of when?”

“Right now.”

“Better tell her that.”

“Just did.” She pointed to the headphones on her ears, which Mairnette realised was on a call. 

“Oh. Ha!”

* * *

Of fucking course Red Robin got attacked on his way to see Mairnette.  _ Of course _ he did. What else would have happened? A nice peaceful night?

He thought the fuck not. 

There were some idiots trying to break in from the hallway, and he decided to pick a fight with them. You know, not letting her die, and all that.

But one of them managed to get away. After throwing him into a wall. Like a fucking  _ idiot _ . 

“Damn.” Someone said, moments later. He looked up to see a slouching ang giggling Detective Raincomprix. 

“What is- Oh.” Marinette leaned out her doorway, and was holding a large glass bottle. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but whatever it was, it was clearly alcohol.

She burst into a fit of giggles. 

“Oh no. Poor bird man, he hit a wall.” Marinette handed her bottle to Sabrina, who took it. 

“My name is not BirdMan, and I know you know that.” He sighed, but she held out her hands, wiggling her fingers at him until he grabbed onto them. “And you are so out of it the second I pull you’re coming down with me.”

“Try me, bitch.” she said a little  _ too  _ loudly, and he tugged, trying to limb up off the floor. She pulled him up so hard he crashed into her. She hummed and giggled at the same time, and Sabrina tried to take a picture with her phone. 

This was going _ less _ than spectacularly. 

He had to remind himself she had no idea who he was. That she still thought Tim and Red Robin were two different people. 

He had to remind himself not to be a total stuttering mess, and that she would figure him out if he did that. Or at least know something was up. 

“Come inside.” She grabbed him by the edge of his cape, and tugged him into her apartment. 

Inside was a girl growing at her computer screen, sitting on the lap of a man who was on his phone, flickering his gaze between his phone and her laptop. 

At the kitchen table was Chloé and someone he figured was Pegasus arguing about some law, or so it seemed. 

“That’s my sister Chloé, and that’s Max, and that’s Alya, and that’s Nino, and Alix is at the grocery store.” Marinette said cheerfully, causing everyone to pause and look up. “And you know- Uh, wait, do you know Detective R?” She caught herself. 

Nino narrowed his eyes at him, but the girl in his lap looked almost starstruck. 

“Dude, that’s Reds Robin.” She whispered excitedly. 

“Yeah. It is.” So Nino must be Carapace, then. Good to know. 

“Um, Marinette? Why have you dragged me inside?”

“Cause you got a big ouchie on your face.” She replied, and kept pulling him into the kitchen. “Sit.” She pointed to the counter, and he sighed before complying and sitting on the counter. She pulled out a first aid kit. 

“Oh no. Oh hell no. I am not letting my drunk baby sister try and mess with the first aid box.” Chloé intervened. “Not like fucking last time.”

“Last time?” He couldn’t help but ask. “What happened last time?”

“One of the other girls in the dorm got a small papercut and Marinette gave her like seven bandaids, thinking they were magic and more of them would help the healing process.”

“Bandaids are magic!” Marinette insisted, jumping up onto the counter next to him, and grabbing his gloved hand. 

“Drunk Marinette just wants everyone to be happy.” Alix, he assumed, walked in. “Ah, you again.”

“Again?” Chloé gave her a raised eyebrow. 

“He knows what he did.” Alix responded vaguely before grabbing the bottle of whatever from Sabrina. 

She made a judgmental face at him. Apparently, she had already had some of the whatever. 

This was not how this was supposed to go.

He had no idea what he had initially planned, but whatever it was, this was not it. NOt even close. Not even in his top 100 ways tonight totally could have gone. Not at all.

“Hey.” Mairnette ignored her temporary roommates, and poked him in the ribs. “Hey. Hey.”

“Yes?” He asked as Chloé Dupain used a warm wet rag to wipe blood off of his face. 

“Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite?” She poked him again. He squeezd his eyes shut for a second, trying to keep his stupid emotions under control, but she couldn’t tell that. 

“No, I don’t believe you have.” he said, truthfully. 

“Oh. Well. You are my favorite bat.” She leaned on him, and pulled his cape so it was over her shoulders. 

She looked adorable. 

She pulled so much of it into her lap, and he wondered what she was doing with it. 

Then she threw it over her head, and giggled. 

“Alya! Alya! Alya!” 

“What?”

“Come here!” She insisted, and Alya peered into the kitchen a few moments later. She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “I’m a bat!” Marinette cackled. Red Robin tried his hardest not to absolutely melt over her. 

“You are a bat.” Alya smiled, and grabbed her phone. 

“You don’t mind if I take a picture of her, do you?” She at least had the generosity to ask, unlike Sabrina. “I promise I won’t post it, I’m not stupid. Just keep it to embarrass her with later.”

“Be my guest.” He agreed, and Chloé stuck a bandage over his cut from a lamp hitting him in the hallway. He gave a small smile as she snapped a few pictures, and Marinette was grinning, obliviously. 

“I called one of the other guys from the precinct, Grayson should be here in a few minutes.” Sabrine mumbed. He had hardly noticed her leave. 

Marinette snuggled farther into his shoulder while holding his cape around her tightly. 

“You know  _ whyyy _ you’re my favorite?” She mumbled. 

“Because I came and saw you after the museum? To thank you personally?”

“Nope.” She chirped. “Because you remind me of my friend.”

“Of your friend?”

“Remember my friend you walked me to? My buddy. My pal. My lovely sexy friend Tim.”

“Oh?” He covered his voice crack smoothly. At least, he hoped he did. 

Drunk Marinette thought he was sexy. How interesting. 

“God, he’s so cute. And smart. And so are you. So cute and smart.”

“You can’t seriously think I’m cute.”

“So cute.” She poked the cowl where his nose should be. She frowned when it turned out to be solid, and therefore rendered his nose un-boop-able. “Cute because you’re so _nice.”_

“Alright, you need to stop talking.” Chloé patted her sister on the shoulder, but Marinette kicked her away. 

“Shut up socks, I’m talking here.” Marinette argued. “I’m trying to tell him how upset I am.” Chloé looked five seconds from strangling the dark-haired sibling. “And how I’m sad because I think I messed everything up, and I’m worried he won’t like me anymore, and now I’ve ruined everything, and oh god I’m gonna have to go to Alaska!” She hiccuped, and he was worried she’d start crying. 

“No, no, that is ridiculous.” he argued with her. “I’m sure your friend is just as freaked out right now, all people get freaked out when talking about emotions because people think that keeping feeling bottled up is kinder to themselves than facing them and getting potential rejection.” He sounded like a hypocrite. He was the one not two days ago who said he was going to move to Alaska.

She narrowed her eyes at him. She leaned closer, awkwardly close, and he finally figured out what kind of drink she had been having. 

“You’re right.” She nodded. “But he probably doesn’t like me anyways, so that’s a problem.”

Wait. 

She liked him. 

Like for real liked him.

She was confessing to Red Robin that she was worried Tim didn’t like her. 

Oh how ironic. 

“Why would you say that?” He countered.

“I’m very flirtatious. And he probably doesn’t think it’s real because I’m loud about it.” She sighed. 

Nah, he noticed. At first, Tim had thought she was like that with everyone ,but after a while, he noticed. He noticed how she was only like that with him. 

“That’s silly.”

“And I work too much. I’m obsessed with coffee and he probably thinks I’m crazy.” Oh please. I’m much crazier than you when it comes to that kind of stuff.

“Nah, this Tim guy is a CEO right? He probably understands that better than anyone.” She nodded slowly. “You know what, you should call him.” Wait. No. he was sitting right next to her. If she called right now he wouldn’t answer, and she would feel awful. 

“Hm…” She considered it. “Tomorrow.” She yawned. “I’ll call him tomorrow. Come up with something stupid to say. Maybe… maybe coffee.” She mused, rocking back and forth as she closed her eyes. 

“Jamming out over there?” Sabrina asked. 

“Jagged Stone.” Marinette responded, bopping her head around. He had to try so hard not to react to her, lest it give him away when they eventually met him as Tim Drake. 

Yet again, this was less than ideal. 

There was a knock at the door. 

Alya answered it, and let in Dick Grayson as well as another officer. 

“Good evening, we heard there was a- Red Robin.” Dick hesiated. He waved. 

“Yes, there is a Red Robin, there is also an attempted break in and kidnapping and muder and it’s not fun.” Sabrina shook her head. “But I also cannot do anything about it in this state.” She raised her glass and did a little wiggle to demonstrate how not-sober she was. 

“I see.” Dick gave him another confused look. He had no answer. He really had no answer. 

Dick took statements from everyone, himself included, before taking the unconscious body out of the hallway. The partner took the tapes from the security cameras to find the other man who got away. 

* * *

Later, Dick cornered him in the cave. 

“Alright, what happened?” Tim sighed.

“I went to check in on Marinette, I needed to talk to her friend, found a couple people trying to break in, never got the chance to talk to her friend because she was so drunk she wouldn’t let me go.”

“And since when was a tiny girl’s grip too much for you to break out of?”

“I didn’t say I tried.” He grumbled before heading back out to go to his own place he had outside of the manor. 

Sure, he still had his room there, but he had a whole-ass apartment that he liked to keep all to himself. 

One where he could make messes without worrying about Alfred cleaning his messes up and moving his things on him. 

He crashed onto his bed, and wondered if she would actually remember to call him the next day, or if she had been too out of it, and would have no idea she made that promise. 

He decided to wait and find out.

* * *

The next morning, his phone rang. 

It was in fact Marinette. 

He started to have a mild panic attack as he answered it. 

“Hello?”

“Waffles.” A voice on the other end of the line grunted. 

“Huh?”

“Tim, I love you, and I’m very hung over, and I want waffles.” He completely froze. He what?

“I need waffles.” She repeated. He realised he had said that last thought out loud. 

“What? Why? Don't you have other people in your house right now?” Wait no. He wasn’t supposed to defer her to other people. He was supposed to play knight in shining waffle armour and save the day and take her on a date in the process.  _ Idiot! _

“Alya’s busy working on her laptop, Nino’s working on a project on his… technological thing of some sort, Alix hit the gym this morning, Max is doing something on his laptop, and Chloé thinks she’s too good to do anything for me. And is sleeping. And Sabrina is more hungover than I am.” Valid arguments right there, if probably a bit fudged for an excuse. 

“Oh.”

“Please, please, please, oh Great and Wonderful Coffee Pal, whom I so love dearly, please for the love of fuck bring me waffles.”

“You know I'm supposed to show up to work today, yeah?”

“Tell them I got a disease and you caught it.” She deadpanned. He snorted. 

“And how did I catch said disease?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I can kiss you, make it believable.” He choked. 

“You have no control over what’s coming out of your mouth right now, do you?” He tried not to blush as he grabbed his keys to figure out what kind of waffles she wanted. 

“Not in the fucking slightest.” She giggled. 

“What kind of waffles do you want?”

“The yummy kind.” _Not helpful, Marinette._

“Like frozen waffles? Do you want me to bring you waffles, or take you out for waffles, or show up at your place and make you some?” There was a silence as she pondered this. 

“I’m probably not sober enough to be seen in public, and especially not with someone as important as you, but  _ god _ I really want Sylvia’s waffles.” He knew that cafe. A small locally owned business.

“What do you mean someone as important as me?”

“You're a big boss man. You gotta be professional. Not walking around with a drunk mess in pajamas who’s making a mess.” She argued. 

“Get out of your pajamas, then, and I’ll call ahead to warn them. And have them ready when you get there.”

“Love you, Boss Man.”

He fidgeted in his seat as he put the keys in the ignition. 

“I know, Cheng.”

“Damn, I’ve been last-name zoned. I knew it. Fuck. Sorry. I won’t say that anymore.” His stomach dropped like a lead rock in the deepest part of the ocean. 

“No! I mean, uh, I really like you too. Marinette.” She sighed on the other end. 

“Ok, Boss Man Drake. I really hope you don’t hate me by the end of the day.”

“I won’t.” He promised, and hung up the phone.

This was shaping up to be the weirdest week of his life. And he had some pretty weird weeks. 

The next call he made was to Sylvia’s. 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Ok, so, um, I kinda owe everyone an explanation. 

I write super randomly. I upload a metric fuckton of content at once, never finish any of it, and never seem to have any real end to anything I post. 

That's because I have [DID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder). Dissociative Identity Disorder. 

I have several different people in my head, they take over randomly, and they all have their own names. 

More than that, they all have their own lives. Likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies. They kind of are their own people. 

I'm so random because only _one_ of these people likes fan fiction. Most of them like stories, but only one of them writes and posts. 

I apologize that these are so random, but my excuse is that I'm only posting when that one alter is in charge of the body and what it's doing. 

One day one of these alters may up and delete the whole account if they decide it's necessary, and the alter who created it will be absolutely livid lmao, but the one who delete's it won't be the one who created it. 

And one day one of the other alters may delete a work if they think the dedication to it is taking too much space in my head, and I can't control that. 

These people in my head, they exist to decide what's right and wrong, and quite often they disagree. 

I'm sorry this is so weird, you don't really have to understand it, this is just me giving an explantation as to why I seem to disappear so often. And why when I come back, I come back and post things all at once. 

My bad. 

Sincerely, someone who is definitely _not_ named Jae lmao. 


End file.
